Austerity...mmm, smells pretty rancid

So, the debt debacle is over and everyone has declared their winners and losers and moved on.  I haven't.  Not just because I can't get over it, but because I'm still waiting for the reaction that I had in all of this: we've chosen the wrong path.

Despite the fact that everybody is pissed off at the deal itself and even more pissed off at the process, we haven't gotten down to the real reason why we should be pissed off: the reasoning behind making this a debate in the first place.  The ideology.  That ideology of austerity and it is a classically conservative economic approach.

Yes, liberals should be pissed because the president and the Democratic leadership demonstrated a willingness to even make a deal in the first place, allowing this to become a thing and not simply a clean vote about the debt ceiling.  Yes, conservatives have some right to be pissed off for not getting everything they wanted, I suppose; not to mention the economic downgrade.  But here is the thing we should all be pissed off about: we never had a real conversation about austerity.  Democrats and Republicans fought about how much austerity we should have, but we never talked about whether or not it was a good idea.  And with dozens of polls coming out in the last couple of weeks demonstrating a super majority of Americans opposing austerity, at least in the unbalanced cut-only approach, even showing majorities of Republicans opposing it, we should be livid.  Again, not because of "process" and "Washington" and "politics" and "sausage-making", but because they flat-out ignored our demands.  They refused to do what we asked for: tax increases on the wealthy.  They refused to use an approach that would preserve future growth in the national and local economies, favoring instead one that would lead to only painful cuts.  This will as certainly lead to job losses not unlike those occurring in all the states that have cut back.  What economists have been asking for is more stimulus, not cutting back.

So here's the deal.  An ideology has been adopted without reasonable debate that will impede job growth, slow financial growth for the national economy, and will continue to lead to market volatility at a moment of tremendous uncertainty.  And that ideology is conservative in origin. This is the long-term win for the Republican Party.  Just as begun in the the late 1970s, liberals have cared more about the process of governing, focusing their attention on the minutia of winning small debates and specific elections by appealing to a fickle group of dual-minded voters in the mythical "center", while conservatives have spent that same time waging a war for ideological supremacy through clubs and universities and the growth of the conservative brand.  As president, Bill Clinton adopted a pretty classic conservative economic policy and spearheaded a generation of "neo-liberals" into a world of bubbles and massive deregulation. With that timeline, this move into austerity is like punching the ball into the end zone.  Now what will liberals do with possession and a 7-point deficit?