Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

The price of gas is spiking in the South (I just filled up at 3.59 in PA, so no problems here). I wonder if this isn’t going to push Obama back into the race in states like Florida, which had been running away from him.

So what is the “key difference” between the parties? Rhetoric. When Republicans advocate a small contraction of the welfare state, Democrats claim that Republicans totally oppose the welfare state. And many Republicans oblige them by standing up for “liberty” and “responsibility.” Similarly, when Democrats advocate a small expansion in the welfare state, Republican claim that Democrats oppose free markets. And many Democrats oblige them by saying things like “markets only benefit the rich.”

This rhetorical illusion is so powerful that when a Democrat like Clinton adopts many pro-market reforms, Republicans still hate him as a 60s radical. And when Bush II sharply expands the welfare state, Democrats still hate him as a billionaire’s lackey.

Bryan Caplan

I have wondered about this myself. If Clinton was the best Republican president since the war (as Greenspan said), then Bush personified many of the things that Republicans say they fear from a Democratic administration: he expanded the entitlements of the welfare state (the biggest expansion for decades), he bust the budget (which Clinton had sent into surplus), he increased the national debt, and he expanded the bureaucracy of the Department of Education to meddle into the affairs of local school. He did all of this with encouragement from a Republican Congress. The same Republican Congress passed the highly anti-business and meddlesome Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Yet, Republicans can still claim with a straight face to stand for smaller government and not be laughed out of the room.

Frankly, I don’t fully understand it.

On intrade, McCain passed the 50% mark: the betting markets now think it more likely that he, rather than Barack Obama, will win the Presidential election.

People have wonder whether the post-convention bump is a real thing (what Russ Roberts has called the scary idea that people would change their minds on something so devoid of real content as a convention) or whether it’s simply a matter of the energised faithful replying to pollsters more (without any change in the number of people who actually plan to vote for any one candidate).

At least the betting markets seem to believe that McCain has got a real boost from his convention: he was trading at 49% earlier in the day(i.e., the consensus view of the market is that he has a 49% chance of becoming president). This is better than it ever was for him.