Rachel Maddow agrees with Dick Cheney:
Given what just happened to the emergency loan that didn't get made to the Big 3 auto makers, I owe a debt of thanks to Dick Cheney, not kidding for reminding us all why it is so important to keep Hoover in mind right now.
[snip]
And how does Hooverism or neo-Hooverism apply to us on this big full moon Friday night in 2008? Well last night Senate Republicans who spent the last eight years setting huge piles of taxpayer money on fire for nothing in return with two ill-advised endless wars they decided that they were the party of reduced spending and fiscal responsibility.
Hell, high water? Feh! Last night, with both hell and high water all around, Senate Republicans killed $14 billion of emergency loans to save GM, Ford and Chrysler. Why? Because they've apparently looked back at the Great Depression and decided that Hoover is their role model. Of course the government shouldn't spend money to shore up its economy and save jobs in a downturn! That might make economic sense. Couldn't do that!
The Senate Republicans are counting on our economic and historical ignorance to win short-term political points for refusing to spend government money on something that it hurts to spend money on. Nobody wants to bail anybody out. But sometimes, you have to. And frankly they are seizing the ideological opportunity to crusade against the unions and against the very idea of Americans making good wages at their jobs.
[snip]
So we're facing a looming three million job economic sink hole. Even if you don't care about those specific workers, those specific American lives, those specific American companies, those specific jobs. Even if you don't care about that everyone fears that a three million job sink hole could suck the world into a depression. Not just us. And in the face of that the Senate Republican caucus decided to block the rescue plan to make a principled point about how much they want to be like Hoover in the Great Depression. And how much they want to lower American wages.
