Ron Paul For President in 2008

[Final-Fan]

N-Syte said:
@ Final-Fan

Firstly, the analogy with the Twinkie eating woman was very appropriate. You appear to sell yourself as some kind of intellectual yet there is rarely a sign of any mental rigor behind your arguments. Was the analogy a bit on the colorful side? Sure, but it was also fitting. You seem to fly by the seat of your pants, flailing wildly hoping something hits the target. And now I have the joy of waiting for your math to prove that liberals have no real interest in big government. In fact they are really libertarian in their fiscal responsibility (somebody please notify the Democratic party). In any event, take it more as a challenge than an insult.

While I care little either way, it is amusing to see how quickly you shifted to “which party is responsible for the debt.” My joiner was to only point out how misleading the basis for your correlation was. I presume you concede that point since you are going through your mathematical gymnastics in hopes of arriving to a similar corollary by another means. I thought your primary purpose was to defend tax increases? Instead you took a decidedly political turn.

As far as WWII is concerned, of course I am full support of the investment required to achieve a military victory against fascism. When I said drop defense spending, I meant to drop it from all years. Was Cold War spending so much more discretionary than WWII? (some would claim the former was a drawn out continuation of the latter) You might be careful about what you cherry pick.

I admit I have not been at my best in our exchange, but I don't think "flailing wildly" is anywhere close to accurate.  I'll also admit that I've allowed this debate to drift away from where it started, but you've added your share to that drifting.  I hope you do enjoy my math.  I think that the numbers actually favor the Republicans, since I think the administration of the President has considerably more than one-third of the influence over the budget between it and Congress, and the House of Representatives has been Democratic for the great majority of the sample time. 

Actually, the debate has always been about which party is responsible for the debt, ever since I kicked it off by asserting that Republicans are not fiscally conservative and have not been for a long time.  For me, "fiscally conservative" and "reducing the deficit/debt" are very closely tied indeed.  So in fact, if the debate has drifted, it's drifted right back to where it should be!  I find it amusing that you seem to have forgotten such a basic fact, when I've generally been the forgetful one in this debate. 

(Although, looking back, I see you've forgotten to answer such challenges as "Can you name even one era of American history in which cutting taxes led directly (in a cause-effect relationship) to a subsequent decrease in spending?")

The point about WWII is that the deficit spending there is clearly anomalous.  I am leery of any comparison equating that spending to that of the Cold War, (A) for the obvious reason that that was an all-out war effort the likes of which have not been seen in this nation since the Civil War and have not been seen again; (B) because for the next three decades of the Cold War, deficit spending advanced only at a crawl, and really exploded only when - surprise, surprise! - a tax-cutting Republican took office and like-minded Republicans took the Senate; and (C) because look at the numbers.  Tell me why I am "cherry picking" when I exclude WWII.  Like I said, a Democratically-administered war went on for over a decade and saw less deficit growth in a decade than under any one of four years of Reagan's term of office, so it's not "Dems + War = Hyoog Deffusit".  Anyway, it's irrelevant because even with WWII included, the Democrats were less deficit-happy than Republicans.  Which I've already pointed out.