"The Cantor Rule"

By Baxter

We cats are stick of Republicans saying, "We tried a stimulus, and it didn't work."

Okay, two things.

One, every impartial study says that the 2009 stimulus did help, if only in slowing the rate of economic decline. Yes, it wasn't anywhere near as successful as we hoped. Of course, when we were feeling optimistic in '09, no one knew that the economy had fallen quite as far and as hard as we now know it had. In short, George W. Bush had screwed up the country more seriously than even we suspected.

But let's revisit the Republican claim that the stimulus "didn't work." What they're saying is, we tried it, it didn't work, let's try something else. Fair enough. But shouldn't we apply the same rule — and for argument's sake, let's call it "The Cantor Rule" — to all of the economic machinations of the Bush years?

Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the destruction of economic regulation, allowing regulators to write federal rules and regs, stopping any serious enforcement of what regulations remained on the books, et cetera? Let's apply the Cantor Rule! We tried all those things! They didn't work!

In light of all those enormous errors of the Administration of the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, we cats wonder why the Republicans, after repeated failures, get a pass — but it's one-and-done for the Democrats. Double standard?

It makes no sense to us. We cats just wish that the Democrats had the balls to hold the GOP's feet to the fire on crap like this.

P.S. Is Eric Cantor gay? Sometimes we wonder. He's already self-loathing enough to have appeared at the Values Voters forum on the eve of Yom Kippur. Surely it's not that much of a leap to suppress his sexual orientation in homage to his Republicanism. Ugh. We cats HISS.