THE DEMOCRATS’ DARK DEPRESSION SECRET

What do you think of when you hear or see a reference to The Great Depression of the 1930s?  What emotions come up for you?

For you and other normal Americans, words like "catastrophe" and "nightmare" come to mind, along with images of unemployment lines blocks long, soup kitchens, and heartbreaking poverty.  All the emotions associated with it are negative.  America would have been incredibly better off if The Great Depression had never happened, right?

You may think and feel that way, but Democrats – the folks who run the Democrat Party – don’t.  You may consider The Great Depression to be the worst thing that ever happened to America, next to the Civil War.  But for the Democrats, it was the best.  After all, the Democrats built their political power on The Great Depression and are very thankful for it. 

Further, it’s their template.  If The Great Depression was their path to power before, then replicating it today is seen as the way to maintain their power into the future.  This is the Democrats’ Dark Depression Secret.  Explains a lot, doesn’t it? 

The power to control federal spending and through it the US economy resides in the House, where all appropriations must originate (which is why the Founders gave Members only two-year terms, so voters could fire them quickly if they mismanaged their money – voters and taxpayers being one and the same back then).

For decades prior to The Great Depression, control of the House, like the Senate and the White House, traded between the two parties, but with Republicans predominating (the 54^th-61^st Congresses, 1895-1910, and the 66^th-71^st, 1919-1930).

In 1928, the Republicans’ luck ran out.  Their best president, Calvin Coolidge, having served only one full term (as VP he became president upon Harding’s death in 1923, then elected in 1924), refused to run again, and they made the disastrous mistake of choosing Herbert Hoover.

Coolidge observed of Hoover:  "For six years, that man has given me unsolicited advice – all of it bad."

So when the economy hit a wall eight months into Hoover‘s presidency, instead of getting out of the way and letting the market correct itself as Coolidge would have done, Hoover interfered and made it worse.  The voters punished his party by giving the Dems control of the House in 1930, then the White House in 1932.

There were two reasons FDR was elected president.  One was that he swore to repeal Prohibition.  The second was that he swore to restore prosperity and end the depression by adhering to the Democratic Party Platform of 1932, which stated:

"The Democratic Party solemnly promises by appropriate action to put into effect the principles, policies, and reforms herein advocated, and to eradicate the policies, methods, and practices herein condemned. We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government."

And which further advocated:

"The removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest."

Had FDR and the Dem Congress enacted policies based on their own sworn platform, the economy would have recovered and quickly, and FDR would most likely have been reelected in 1936 – but there would have been no justification for him to run again for an unprecedented third term in 1940.

And what was that justification?  Why the economy, of course! 

In his eight years in office, FDR had done the exact opposite of what he promised. His "New Deal" had expanded government enormously making vast numbers of voters dependent upon Democrat-dispensed government largesse. Coming into 1940 unemployment was 19% and the stock market had crashed (starting in Sept. 1939 the DJIA collapsed 40%, not recovering until April 1942).

After eight years in power FDR was not only still blaming "the Republicans" for the Great Depression, he campaigned by demonizing the Republican candidate, Wendell Wilkie, as a "rich Wall Street industrialist," and blamed him and America’s "business leaders" for greedily causing all of the economy’s problems.

FDR won by five million votes and an electoral college count of 449-82.  The Democrats maintained their monopoly control of the House, which they would keep (with two irrelevant interregnums of 1948-50/1954-56 when Republicans won tiny majorities and quickly lost them in the next cycle) until 1994.

For sixty-four years the Democrats ruled the House as their private kingdom.  They regained their rule in 2006 and have no intention whatever of relinquishing it ever again.  They look at history and see what gave them those 64 years of power in the first place.  It’s obvious to them that duplicating the Great Depression – particularly the massive unemployment – is what will keep them in power.

It’s not that Dems are so pathologically anti-capitalist they can’t psychologically or ideologically do what it takes to revive the economy.  It’s that they are pathologically addicted to power and see the lesson of history is to keep people unemployed and dependent upon them enough to vote for them.

Is it any wonder then, that the very last thing the Pelosicrats and the Zerocrats are doing is to incentivize businesses to hire people, that they are devoting all their energies into passing gigantic nonsensical programs like Cap & Trade and ObamaCare that are designed to do grave economic damage to America?

They are not misguided, they are not mistaken.  They are doing this on purpose.  There is just one problem with their strategy.  It won’t work.  Not this time.

First, history does not repeat itself.  The truth is the opposite of Santayana’s famous quote:  those who believe history repeats itself are doomed never to learn from it.

The trick is to recognize historical patterns, and know how to apply them to the uniquely different circumstances of what is happening now. (Just as a doctor applies his store of medical learning to you as an individual patient, and doesn’t treat everyone the same.)

The circumstances of the 30s are vastly different from now.  Just take communications, public understanding of market economics, or gun ownership – now in the hundreds of millions, with billions of rounds of ammo – for starters. 

But more importantly, Zero is no FDR.  Zero doesn’t have a thimbleful of FDR’s political smarts.  Zero is an emotionally unstable narcissist, which any Greek playwright would recognize as his tragic flaw impelling him to doom.  The Dems think he’s their champion leading them to the Kingdom of Power, but his agenda is very different from theirs.

FDR was an American and could skillfully relate to Americans.  Zero is not and cannot.  FDR wanted power, but he didn’t hate his country.  Zero does.  His preacher’s denunciation, "God Damn America," resonates with his soul.  His agenda is to weaken and damage the country he despises. 

As Democrats begin to realize the horrific consequences of the first Anti-American Presidency, more and more of them will recoil from it.  And not just from a sense of revulsion, but from one of political survival.  Scores of them are holding on to their districts by their fingernails, and know the only way to keep their grip in 2010 will be to run from Zero – and Pelosi – as fast as they can.

Further, Chicago Way gangster politics is no substitute for the political skills and genius of an FDR.  Will Rogers back in the 30s memorably quipped, "I don’t belong to an organized party – I’m a Democrat."  Ku Klux Klan southern racists were at ease in the same party as Boston Brahmins, and FDR easily held them all together. 

This current gang – Zero, Emanuel, Axelrod, Reid & Pelosi – can’t do it.  Too many guys are bolting already.  It’s like herding cats.

So the gang will fail – but so will the economy.  Hundreds of billions of created-out-of-air dollars are pumping up the markets, until they crash because there is no real investment, no real hiring, no real profits, and no real consumer spending.  Bloomberg is now predicting a 40% crash of the S&P.

Thus next year is going to be truly miserable for millions.  Stagflation on steroids.  Double-digit inflation with double-digit unemployment.  Zero and the Pelosicrats will continue to blame Bush like FDR blamed Hoover, continue to blame Wall Street and greedy private business like FDR, continue to claim government programs and more power to them are the only solutions like FDR, continue to make more voters dependent upon them like FDR – but it won’t work for them as it did for FDR.

Zero is too stupid, too incompetent, too nutso narcissistic, and too transparently Anti-American for it to work.  FDR is laughing in his grave.

But we won’t be laughing – not until November 2, 2010, and that’s a long ways away, with a lot of misery to live through until then.  The herd of Democrat cats won’t be able to damage the economy as much as Zero wants, but they also won’t be herded into preventing the US sliding into an economic abyss next year with pro-capitalist legislation.

Yet at least now the Democrats’ Dark Depression Secret is out.  America will not let them get away with it.  

Ps:  You’ll get a sardonic kick out of these additional solemn pledges of the Democratic Party Platform of 1932.  The irony to simply exquisite:

We condemn the improper and excessive use of money in political activities.

We condemn paid lobbies of special interests to influence members of Congress and other public servants by personal contact.

We condemn action and utterances of high public officials designed to influence stock exchange prices.

We condemn the open and cover resistance of administrative officials to every effort made by Congressional Committees [which the Dems were now in control of] to curtail the extravagant expenditures of the Government and to revoke improvident subsidies granted to favorite interests.