Hypocrisy?

    So, it is really bad when Joe Lieberman contributes to Republican framing and talking points, but when Markos of Daily Kos does it, it is a-okay? He says:

Libertarian Dems are not hostile to government like traditional libertarians. But unlike the liberal Democrats of old times (now all but extinct), the Libertarian Dem doesn't believe government is the solution for everything. But it sure as heck is effective in checking the power of corporations.

    This is in the middle of post where Markos explains that he is a libertarian Democrat because he supports...everything that liberal egalitarians do, and perhaps one day he might explain how being a libertarian Democrat is consistent with lukewarm defenses of reproductive rights (funny how both privacy issues and gun control are mentioned, but not abortion),  but whatever.

    My question is this. Exactly who are these "extinct" liberals? Exactly what liberal bogeyman has argued that government is always the solution to our problems? That our first response should be "more bureaucracy"? Mario Cuomo? Ted Kennedy? FDR? Lyndon Johnson? Give me names. What disastrous regulatory endeavour have liberals supported that would have been best handled by a "business-government partnership"?

    I would take this "crashing the gate" stuff more seriously if I didn't see it as simply just more interest group politics, with the netroots being just another interest group. But when I see Markos, one of the netroots head honchos, spreading Republican anti-Dem talking points in order to score intra-party points, I despair.

Comments

[Billy Joe Mills]

The first one that I can think of to argue for more government and more bureaucracy is John Maynard Keynes. Toward the end of his life he began to regret that his economic suggestions had been taken far beyond his intention when they were enacted in the policy world.

No one argues that government is "ALWAYS" the solution, but the question is who argues that government is often the first thing we look to when a problem needs to be solved.