Last week I spent some time at the National Taxpayers Conference in Crystal City, just over the river from Washington DC, trying to figure what the hardcore fiscal conservatives of the National Taxpayers Union had on their agenda in this era of out-of-control spending and government war on free enterprise. To my chagrin I found the event to be a shadow of what I understand it was in previous years. It was under-attended, with a weak schedule of speakers and an air of resignation which was almost palpable. I saw too many people talking about how to live with the excesses of the Obama era and too few discussing ways to fight back and preserve our most basic economic freedoms.
I'm sure that some of the low attendance can be blamed on the economy, but when is it more important for believers in responsible fiscal policy to organize than when times are darkest and the government is spending us into economic serfdom? The NTU's publications talk about leading a "national tax revolt" but what I found at the conference was about 200 of the same old think-tank staffers and DC insiders talking at each other with only a handful of grassroots activists in attendance, looking bewildered and out of place.
There were some good speakers and interesting events on the program, most notably Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal and John Stossel from ABC News, but the tone for the event was really set by the fact that the opening speaker was Sen. John McCain, who may look like a fiscal conservative by DC standards, but really doesn't have a lot of credibility, based on his record of lukewarm efforts and marginal accomplishments. It was clearly a bad sign that the bio of McCain in the program had far more about his war experiences than it did about anything he had ever done to reduce taxes or government spending. Sadly the same was true for most of the other speakers. They had plenty of accomplishments to list, but few of those were in the area of shrinking government and saving taxpayers money.
The breakout sessions had more to offer than the major speakers did, especially if you were interested in running a local political group or organizing tax protests. Groups like the Sam Adams Alliance and the Leadership Institute had good ideas and valuable things to teach grassroots activists in sessions like "Building an Effective Grassroots Organization" and "Getting Beyond Bylaws and Boards," but their knowledge would have been put to better use had more than a handful of actual grassroots activists been in attendance.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
Interesting.
As you said, it's sad, at this time in our history, with the most spendthrift administration ever in Washington, that these folks aren't more effective.
I would really have enjoyed seeing Moore and Stossel talk. I just read the Moore/Laffer book, and always enjoy Stossel's appearances on TV.
2 - RJ
These think-tankers need to reach out to the Glenn Beck 912ers and the Tea Party people. That's your grassroots right there.
3 - roger nowosielski
There may be one explanation, Dave, why the efforts to reach or develop "grass roots" are likely to be ineffective. Perhaps the bulk of the tea-party attendees and so-called "concerned citizens" are more concerned with their own stinking situation than what's "good" for the country at large. Right or wrong, it's the idealistic viewpoint that is most conducive to any kind of mass movement; and these people hardly cut an idealistic mindset as though their concern was with the principle of the thing rather than their own predicament.
I'd say it's something to think about.
4 - Dr Dreadful
"Can you have a "movement" when you're just a bunch of think tank staffers talking to each other and the public didn't show up?"
What kind of movement?
;-P
5 - Dr Dreadful
Now that I've dragged the debate down a notch...
RJ actually makes a good point in #2. I'm sure the NTU was encouraged by the Tea Party kerfuffle but it sounds as if they didn't really take advantage of it.
6 - m ark
More like the grassroots didn't take advantage of the NTU.
And let me take the debate one notch lower: I got yer grassroots right here! (image the appropriate gesture)
7 - Clavos
Ah, the intellectual stimulation! The erudition! The lofty discourse!*
*Or whatever...
YMMV
8 - RJ
Seriously, it shouldn't be just small-government conservatives and libertarians who are concerned about the budget deficit and the national debt. I mean, it took over 200 years for our country to accumulate the debt we currently have, and 0bama is going to double it in less than a decade.
Shouldn't, like, EVERYONE be concerned about that?
9 - m ar k
The 'tea party' that I attended had folks of all persuasions except for the hardened Obama supporters.
10 - Bliffle
The problem is that these folks lost credibility by not opposing the spendthrift Bush adminisration, so they have no standing now as anti-spending champions.
Instead, they went along with Bush and chose partisan politics.
11 - Lumpy
Groups like NTU and CAGW did actually speak out on their spending and tax issues while Bush was in office but then as now no one was listening.
12 - Dave Nalle
Bliffle, the Bush spending is so totally dwarfed by what Obama is doing that if people who supported Bush "lost credibility" then everyone who is supporting Obama ought to be stoned in the streets.
Dave
13 - Clavos
then everyone who is supporting Obama ought to be stoned in the streets.
A lot of 'em probably are, but in their living rooms.
14 - Bliffle
Dave,
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
FWIW, I think the neo-republicans and Bush made a bad play. IMO they decided that if they spent the nation sufficiently into debt that there would be no money left for a subsequent dem administration to do anything. But they were wrong (once again demonstrating that the neo-reps and Bush were/are poor strategists) because BHO simply ignored the debt and raised the ante.
So now we are unwilling participants in a spending race between the reps and dems.
15 - roger nowosielski
I wonder if they'll let you get by with that statement, bliffle. If you're even halfway right, you could be onto something.
16 - Cindy
The 'tea party' that I attended had folks of all persuasions except for the hardened Obama supporters.
It even had anarchists. :-)
17 - Clavos
So now we are unwilling participants in a spending race between the reps and dems.
18 - Dave Nalle
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
He did that in 8 years, while fighting two expensive wars. Obama has spent or pledged to spend almost that much in 3 months while accomplishing nothing at all.
Dave
19 - Jordan Richardson
Oh, so the two expensive wars are over? Neat!
20 - Ruvy
Dave,
You have two big problems with the NTU etc. One is that American conservatives - from the NIMBY crowd to the isolationist crowd to the "my fuckin' taxes are too high!" crowd, tend to not help others.
The other is that the Blessed of Hussein went right around the tax issue and just handed out money without bothering to deal with taxes.
Both he and Bush are fiscally irresponsible in the extreme, and it is only a matter of time before those chickens come home to roost - and sink the dollar altogether. Then, in come the Chinese, taking your assets (and your asses) collecting on their teds.
I suspect that this realization slowly sinking in is what kept grassroots participation so low at the seminars you went to.
21 - RJ
Bush increased the national debt by about $5trillion, a sum well beyond anything real or implied in BHOs plans.
Wrong:
"President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016."
After 2016, of course, massive budget deficits are projected to continue.
The Left has no credibility on this issue. They attacked Bush relentlessly on the deficit when he was in office, but now that 0bama is in office, they don't seem to mind record-shattering budget deficits at all. Conservatives, on the other hand, were appalled by the spending and the deficits under both Presidents.
22 - Bliffle
What happened , IMO, is that the various "taxpayers" outfits let themselves be swept into the neo-republican party years ago, from which partisan position they could not escape. Thus, they had to lay low during the Bush wild spending, but that has just made them laughable now. People can't be blamed for thinking that the "taxpayer" outfits are just neo-republican puppets.
23 - Bliffle
Gee, Roger, I thought it was pretty obvious to anyone who thought about it back in 2001 that the republican strategy was to make sure that they left an empty treasury and big debts so that any subsequent democrat administration would be paralyzed for lack of money. It's a traditional political ploy.
But that was based on their presumption of getting another Clinton-like dem, maybe Hillary herself, who would assiduously strive to prove himself (or herself) president worthy by balancing the budget and overcoming past rep debts (as Clinton dealt with the leftover Reagan-Bush debts).
But they miscalculated by assuming that Bill Clintons rightward shift was a permanent change in the dems: a serious miscalculation, as we see.
24 - roger nowosielski
To tell the truth, I didn't give it much thought then. My interest in politics comes and goes. Plus, it was much more absorbed by my personal life then and my love affairs, no to mention the two novels I was writing. But what you're saying now does appear to make sense. In fact, it struck me as something to really ponder about.
25 - Dave Nalle
So, "Clinton-like Dem" is Bliffle's code word for "fiscally responsible" as opposed to batshit crazy, spend the country into total economic destruction, which is what we got.
Dave