Why Settle for One Santa when GOP Offers Two?

In 1976, conservative economist Jude Wanniski divined Republicans would never achieve national political realignment by only playing Scrooge to the Democrats' Santa Claus promises of new spending programs.

Throughout history "demand" has been the driving force in economics. Get money into the hands of people through decent paying jobs, loans or, in Western democracies, entitlements and subsidies, and they buy stuff, in turn generating more jobs. It's what accounted for the explosion of middleclass prosperity following World War II. Turn off the tap and middleclass assets dry up.

Wanniski came up with a notion called supply-side economics. In place of using tax policies to increase middleclass purchasing power, you promise to cut taxes across the board, what he called the "Second Santa Claus." Of course the "across-the-board" part is hogwash. The T-rex's share goes to the rich.

So instead of growing the economy from the bottom through demand, supply-siders promise to grow it from the top by slashing taxes for the wealthy and hoping money trickles down to the unwashed. Effectively, turning off the tap. This is the "voodoo economics" that George H. W. Bush accused Reagan of in 1980 and that subsequently he and Republicans foisted on the country.

It all came to its predictable collision with reality when, following the Bush II tax cuts, job creation, tax revenue and middleclass income flatlined -- contrary to supply-side conjecture -- even before the Wall Street meltdown.

What did occur was a huge windfall for the top 20 percent in turn propelling the stock market and housing bubbles as their quadrupled wealth chased unrealistic profits while the middleclass amassed enormous household debt (130 percent of income), all of which factored in the 2008 collapse. It's a financial bender the country will be working it's way out of for a decade.

The Two Santa Claus Theory is not simply classic Taft-Goldwater conservatism. In the past, Republican parsimony and Democratic exuberance coexisted in a kind of self-correcting pendulum to keep a healthy balance between free markets and economic justice.

Wanniski instead urged Republicans to cut revenue yet spend like drunken elves -- the last three Republican presidents racked-up $9.5 trillion of the $12.7 trillion debt amassed since Reagan took office -- and then wail like banshees about deficits to make it impossible for Democrats to govern effectively.

Now because of Republican's irresponsible tax cutting while waging two unfunded wars and passing unfunded Medicare Part D, America doesn't have the wherewithal, without crashing the bank, to implement those infrastructure, education and renewable energy leaps that are essential to the nation's 21st century vitality.

But what the hell. This Christmas the rich are richer than they've been since Tiny Tim Cratchit's day.

"God bless us, every one!"