VDH explains how conservatives created the pathway to the present situation and the administration that presides over it:
Conservatives created Barack Obama and his vision of the Europeanization of America, and so have themselves to blame for the current recessional, as the present as we have known it fades into the past….. The pillar of conservatism is fiscal responsibility. Why? Balancing budgets and saying no to always expanding government, first, is a moral issue. Just as the individual does not borrow from others to satisfy his own appetite, does not consume what he does not earn, so too government should not spend what the nation has not produced. The conservative, as the custodian of ancient morality, must remind the populace of the thriftiness of our ancestors that explains the bounty we inherited. If not he, who will say that life is not fair, that human nature is predictable and thus tragic, that in our brief corporal lives we can guarantee an equality of rough opportunity but hardly mandate an equality of absolute result—since we are mere mortals, not gods?
VDH’s case is damning indeed. Conservatives foolishly decided that the exigencies of the War on Terror justified their behaving like liberals; instead of guarding against the expansion of central state power, they joined forces with the liberals in growing it. Now, as libertarians like me have been predicting for years, they’re unhappy that the expanded power they helped create is in the hands of their political foes, as if that wasn’t predictable from the start.
Modern politicians didn’t cause the economic crisis, as the seeds for that were planted back when the 63rd Congress elected to turn monetary power over to the Federal Reserve. They merely helped determine the particular form it took. If the credit inflation hadn’t taken place in the tech and housing sectors, it would simply occurred in some other part of the economy. But in first choosing George W. Bush as their standard bearer, then lining up behind him in support of his wars and occupations, conservatives laid the groundwork to put Obama into office at this critical juncture. The insane selection of John McCain instead of Ron Paul as the 2008 Republican Party standard bearer was little more than the foul icing on an excremental cake. Paul might well have lost… but he certainly couldn’t have done any worse than McCain and the Republican Party would have far more credibility with regards to the present crisis than it does now.
Actions have consequences. It’s a genuine pity so many conservatives forgot such a conservative concept.