The Collapse of the Right’s Ponzi Scheme

[Ed: Today's contribution to Bush Legacy Week on the Big Con comes from the inestimable Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation, author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.] [1]

The news that the Republican National Committee plans to build a new in-house think tank [2] to develop fresh ideas that will be “consistent with the Republican ideals of sound governance” seems a bit like Bernard Madoff announcing that he will be opening a new investment fund. At this point, the public knows to beware that pretty much anything emanating from a conservative think tank -- and many dozens of them continue to operate across the country -- can cause enormous damage. The economic devastation we are currently experiencing, as none other than Alan Greenspan conceded, is an outgrowth of a free-market ideology that turned out to “have a flaw.” Conservative think tanks likewise boisterously cheered on the charge to the disastrous war in Iraq.

The underlying reason why the right’s once vaunted ideas produced such a deep and wide swath of governmental failures is that the wealthy funders of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups wanted more than anything to weaken the government -- lower taxes and less regulation of their businesses were their central motivating aims. But to achieve those goals, the right’s institutions needed to develop politically palatable arguments about how their ideas would make everyone, not just big earners, better off. So deregulation would create jobs. Supply-side tax cuts for the rich would trickle down to the masses without increasing deficits. Social Security privatization would make all Americans prosperous in their retirement. Devolving responsibilities like emergency response to the states would produce more efficient government. And so on with school vouchers, health savings accounts, and cutbacks to agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency -- all of which were supposed to be beneficial to the general public.

The right’s marketing machine sold those arguments well, and they succeeded in dominating political debates for nearly thirty years. But just as Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came crashing down after decades of fooling people, the conservative movement’s intellectual bankruptcy has at long last been laid bare for everyone to see. So the Republican Party can open yet another think tank, if it wants. But the public isn’t likely to buy any more of the right’s ideas for a long, long time.