Not Much of a Choice

Mark Steyn editorialized in Chicago Sun Times American politics seems to have dwindled down to a choice between a big government party and a big permanently-out-of-government party.

I like the idea of the Dems becoming a permanently out-of-govermnent-party, but once they are stomped complely into the mud I suspect the Republican party will split into two parties, one that retains the small government approach, and a conservative but large government party.

The Senate Democrats had two months to cook up a reason to vote against John Roberts and the best California's Dianne Feinstein could manage come the big day was that she'd wanted to hear him "talking to me as a son, a husband and a father." In that case, get off the judiciary committee and go audition for ''Return To Bridges of Madison County,'' or ''What Women Want 2'' ("Mel Gibson is nominated to the Supreme Court but, despite being sensitive and a good listener, is accused of being a conservative theocrat").

That slab of meaningless emotive exhibitionism would make a good epitaph for the Democratic Party. The reality of life as a bigshot Dem is that what John Roberts is like "as a father" is less important than what George Soros is like as a sugar daddy. The more money shoveled at the party by Moveon.org, Hollywood, NOW and other unrepresentative fringes, the less it's able to see over the big pile of green to the electorate beyond. A party as thoroughly Sorosized as the Democrats is perforce downsized.

These days one party raises a ton of money from George Soros and the other raises a ton of money from you. George Bush has committed to spending $200 billion on Gulf Coast "hurricane relief."

I know the MSM is claiming that he committed to spending $200 billion on the Gulf Coast, but that is not what I heard him say. He said "we will spend what it takes" (which some think is $200 billion), and then he proposed

• a Gulf Opportunity Zone (which just provides some tax breaks for investment)
• Worker Recovery Accounts ($5000 per person for training - if there are 500,000 that means 2.5 billion, not 200 billion), and
• Urban Homesteading Act (government land to build a house if they get a mortgage or persuade a non profit like Habitat for Humanities to build a house on it)

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore put the figure in perspective: There are supposedly half-a-million families displaced by Katrina. For $200 billion, you could give every family 400,000 bucks, and they could build their own beachfront home virtually anywhere in America except next door to Barbra Streisand's pad.

For 400 grand, they could all move into the Plaza Hotel -- with a view of Central Park, not the cheap rooms looking out on 58th -- and live off the 30-dollar Snickers from the mini-bar. Oh, sure, some might blow the $400,000 on beer and strippers, as several hurricane "victims" have already done with their complimentary Fedit-credit cards at the Baby Dolls Club in Houston. "You lost your whole house," said Abby, one of the eponymous dolls, "you might want some beer in a strip club."

But even Abby, skilled as she no doubt is, would have a hard job taking as much off as the "public servants" of Louisiana will once that $200 billion starts sluicing through the sewers of its kleptocrat bureaucracy. Even taking the gloomiest view of human nature's partiality to beer in a strip club, giving every displaced Gulf Coast family an instant 401(k) with an instant 400k would be unlikely to be as economically wasteful as a 200 bil government program -- unless, that is, it's going straight to the Army Corps of Engineers to build the world's highest seawall out of unused Sacagawea dollar coins.