Obama, Democrats Aren’t Ideological?

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in his newest book, Tyranny of Cliches (which you should buy and read if you haven’t already), the Left is constantly accusing conservatives of being bound by ideology. You see, we’re the ideologues, but they’re not.

In fact, the Left has turned the word “ideological” into a kind of slur. When they tag you with the label, they are attempting to paint you as an extremist with them, conversely, being the ones interested in “compromise.” We all know that’s a load of crap. But somehow this narrative lingers.

There’s nothing wrong with being ideological. There is something disingenuous about trying to poison the exchange of ideas / solutions by distorting what it means to be ideological, though. Anyway, the main reason the Left tries to use “ideological” as a pejorative is because their ideology has a history of being disastrously wrong. So the only way for them to move their agenda forward is to pretend they’re not being ideological when they are, in fact, being ideological.

There’s no better example of their being ideological than their almost cult-like adherence to the idea that taxes on “the rich” need to be raised in order to solve the budget deficit crisis we’re soon going to be facing if nothing is done. By most estimates, raising taxes on the “rich” would bring in about 50-100 Billion more per year in federal revenue. That’s a couple of weeks of federal spending, at best. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that’s not going to cut it.

We also know that this additional revenue isn’t going to be used to pay down the debt. Democrats are literally saying they’ll use this “additional” revenue to fund NEW programs. How is this not ideological? They want to expand the government. That’s their ideology. Oh sure, they sell their ideology in nice terms like “helping the poor” and “fairness”, but the reality is they simply want to give the federal government more power, which requires more money from taxpayers.

When you insist on pushing forward an agenda that literally doesn’t change anything and in most cases makes things worse, you are being ideological – in the “bad” way. Yet, they’re accuse us – those of us who understand that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem – of being ideological. But we’re being ideological in the “good” way. We’re using history to show us that increasing taxes, without doing squat about spending (AKA Democrat Dogma), doesn’t work. Conversely, we know that lowering taxes actually increases revenue to the government because the economy expands and the tax base is increased. DUH! More economic activity means more taxable income. It happens every single time. You’re damned right we’re being ideological, because our ideology is historically proven to work.

Our ideology tells us that government spending at a level over 21% of GDP will lead to unsustainable spending and deficits. Why? Because the federal government has never, ever, been able to collect revenues higher than 21% of GDP. Ever. Even when the “rich” were paying 90% tax rates.

(h/t on the chart to @OrwellForce who you should all be following on Twitter)

See that? This is historical proof that no matter what you tax “the rich”, federal revenues will never go higher than around 21% of GDP. Ever.

Insisting on raising taxes in the face of the chart above is the “bad” kind of being “ideological” and it is precisely what the Left is doing. So enough of this nonsense. The Left is just as ideological as we are, but there’s one difference. We have historical data that backs up our ideology. The Left has theories which have never been able to deliver real world results.

Period.