Why Neo-Hooverism Now?
As I documented, the right initially tended toward a neo-Hooverite line on the economic crisis. Then came a seeming shift and the emergence of a broad consensus in favor of strong action. Recently, though, there’s been a tilt back in the neo-Hooverite direction even as the crisis has grown more severe and along with it, increased blogospheric interest in what motivates neo-Hooverism. Steve Benen offered a five-fold categorization of motives:
- The Moral Explanation: Ed Kilgore explains that some on the right thing America is too fate and happy. This is a bit like David Frum’s nineties vintage Donner Party conservatism.
- The Benefactor Explanation: Matt Stoller says the right is more interested in entrenching inequality than worrying about the economy.
- The Illiterate Explanation: Maybe they’re just dumb.
- The Strategic Explanation: TPM Reader JF observes that a long depression serves the GOP’s political interests.
The obvious thing to say about this is that these explanations are mutually re-enforcing. In particular, the fact that a prolonged economic downturn serves the GOP’s political interests massively increases the grasp of the other factors. It’s one thing for a political party to buck the desires of its interest-group base or the ideological biases of its core supporters when doing so is necessary for the party’s political fortunes. But to buck those desires when doing so would be bad for the party’s electoral prospects is really asking a lot.
Beyond that, the emergence of age polarization in the electorate may play a role here. Elderly people, and especially the more prosperous group of elderly people, are actually reasonable well-positioned to weather a deflationary storm. By contrast, young people pay a huge lifelong economic price for graduating into a weak labor market or getting laid off after only a few years in the workforce.
40 Responses to “Why Neo-Hooverism Now?”
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December 5th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Maybe unlike the Democrats with Bush they realize that anything good that happens will benefit Obama and supporting Obama won’t win them anything. On the other hand, Obama might fail and being seen as supporting a policy that failed doesn’t help either. Given there will be a stimulus of some sort, the rational thing is to oppose it so you have a strong base to say “I told you so” if it fails.
And given that Republicans suffered no ill from Clinton’s economic package passing without them I’m sure they think the same playbook applies.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
The Moral Explanation: Ed Kilgore explains that some on the right thing America is too fate and happy. This is a bit like David Frum’s nineties vintage Donner Party conservatism.
Really, Matt, don’t you proofread these things before they go up? Aren’t you embarrassed by the typos?
December 5th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Come on Matt.
Five fold categorization lists four, starting with some on the right thing!
Is CAP this piss poor to throw all editorial standards down the drain?
December 5th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Shelby and Corker are out for the UAW, their’s being “right to work” states and all.
I think their bloodlust blinds them.
After today’s jobs report, the GOP may be re-thinking obstructionism.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Five fold categorization lists four
This is not really Yggi’s fault; Benen’s fifth explanation was that the right hates America and wants to destroy it, and he didn’t mean it seriously.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:36 am
…a prolonged economic downturn serves the GOP’s political interests…
But note that there’s a major risk here: being perceived as hindering the recovery would be massively detrimental to the GOP’s political interests.
So the GOP will probably try to veer back and forth between (a) promoting recessionary policies, and (b) going along with anti-recessionary policies when the optics of (a) would be too severe.
The challenge for the rest of the country will be making sure they don’t get away with it. In the past (e.g., on filibusters) the media has done a horrible job of reporting on GOP obstructionism. That had better change fast.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I think the fifth categorization deserves serious mention: the right wing hates America, or, at least, everything it has ever seemed to represent, so, yeah, they’re happy to see America and America damaged so long that the things they hate are hurt.
Nobody, but nobody, hates America and wishes it ill like Republicans and right wingers, which is why they’ve waged a 30 year Reaganite / McCarthyite jihad to flush down the toilet every achievement ever made from the New Deal to Civil Rights to the Great Society to, well, anything, and with only 8 years of Executive power with 4 years of absolute dominance of all 3 branches of government, that’s what they did.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I think it might be new-Hooverish for Dave to think that Matt should be filled with shame for having a typo in the original post(’fate’ rather than ‘fat’). Oh the humanity.
p.s. I seem to have coined even a newer term: neo-Hooverish. Such as, “Dude, it is so neo-Hooverish for you to say I shouldn’t have extra cheese on my pizza.”
December 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I’m beginning to thing I am a little to fate also.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Matt should stop using the term neo-Hooverite in the manner he does, since it betrays enormous ignorance of Hoover’s actual actions, which included vigorous, but ultimately disaterous, intervention in the economy.
December 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Sancho,
Enormous ignorance has never stopped Matt from commenting on anything. He “knows” what just about every liberal “knows.” Hoover bad. End of story.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Old folks with a lot of money hold a lot of that money in assets that have precipitously dropped in value.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Sorry, what’s “too fate and happy” supposed to mean? I’m not sure if it’s a typo or a real expression–I’ve never heard it before, if the latter.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Maybe Matt can tell us if the Bush administration is on the right or not.
Bailouts of big banks and other institutions are unpopular with voters. Given their unpopularity and given that it isn’t clear whether the bailouts will have their intended effect, and given that if they do have their intended effect it will be hard to demonstrate that they were in fact responsible, we should expect that the political party in opposition will naturally take the popular stance. That’s why we saw so much irresponsible-but-popular posturing by Democrats on the war in Iraq.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Five is not four.
December 5th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
No snide accusation of Josh Marshall plagiarism in this post?
December 5th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Back in the 1990s, a lot of Tsongas-worshipping liberals got on board with this philosophy as well.
December 6th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Neo-Hooverism: it sucks more than the original
December 7th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Another possible explanation: Some Republicans are genuinely convinced that unimaginably huge deficit spending on bailouts with little or no oversight is just plain dangerous and might well cause greater misery, including the implosion of the US Dollar, the default of the US on its national debt, and the collapse of American society with all the resultant civil unrest, revolution, mass starvation, and so on. It may already be too late to stockpile the spam and ammo.
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February 12th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
you might want to go research the history a bit. You’ve mischaracterized Hoover and obviously have little to no clue about the massive interventions he made in the markets – most of which were detrimental.
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March 31st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
NEO-HOOVERITE?
How quickly the Left forgets… or wants you to.
5.) Hoover was a committed progressive even before becoming president
As Secretary of Commerce, Hoover proposed a Federal Department of Education (did not pass), advocated fifty-cent/month pensions for citizens over the age of 65 (did not pass), created an anti-trust division in the Justice Department, canceled leases by private oil companies on Federal lands, and expanded civil service coverage of Federal positions.
4.) Hoover favored high taxes and wealth re-distribution.
As President, Hoover signed the Revenue Act of 1932, raising personal income taxes to 63% (from 25%) and establishing a corporate tax of 13.75%. The personal income tax had been cut down to 25% in the highest bracket prior to the Depression, and Hoover re-raised it to fight budget deficits.
3.) Hoover didn’t advocate laissez-faire
Hoover rejected Treasury Secretary Mellon’s “leave it alone” approach, organizing the National Credit Corporation for banks to save each other and Reconstruction Finance Corporation to give $2 billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, farm mortgage associations, and other businesses. He also approved the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, aimed at new home construction and reducing foreclosures. Sound familiar?
2.) FDR and Garner accused Hoover of being a socialist
Ironically, FDR (in 1932) accused Hoover of “reckless and extravagant spending,” further accusing him of having the idea that “that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,” and of leading “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Further, ‘Cactus Jack’ (John Nance Garner, FDR’s first VP) stated that Hoover was “leading the country down the path of socialism”. (credit Otto Friedrich’s “FDR’s Disputed Legacy, TIME, for the quotes)
1.) FDR’s programs came from Hoover
New Dealer Rexford Tugwell once remarked that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”
Example: Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, an early predecessor of the Works Project Administration, as FDR used the ERCA and the RFC to expand the New Deal.
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