Economics

What's the Matter With the What's the Matter With Kansas Guy Busting Phil Gramm's Chops for Valorizing the Common Midwest Man Years Before Coining "Nation of Whiners"?

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Tim Cavanaugh spells it out, using the old-timey tactic of reporting, over at the not-downsized-yet Opinion L.A. blog.

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Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. Anonymoose.

    Now that’s hope for America.

  2. joe

    Phil Gramm’s comment is why all the howling about Obama the Elitist never had any chance of mattering: the elitism necessary for a multi-millionaire to declare that the little people are “whiners” for being unhappy about the economy we’re in is an inescapable part of being a Republican, and Barack Obama is running against a Republican.

    Now keep it down, riff-raff. John McCain and his buddies are sick and tired of your yapping.

  3. R C Dean

    joe, he wasn’t saying they were whiners for being unhappy with a slow-growth economy, he said they were whiners for demanding the gubbament save them.

    I don’t think anyone should be disqualified by their personal circumstances for saying that. Sounds like an ad hominem to me.

  4. Invisible Finger

    the elitism necessary for a multi-millionaire to declare that the little people are “whiners” for being unhappy about the economy we’re in is an inescapable part of being a Republican,

    And I thought most of that “whiners” comment was directed toward Wall Street.

    People hear what they want to hear.

  5. joe

    Indeed, people DO hear what they want to hear.

    Here’s the quote:

    “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

    “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

    Not a single word about “the government saving them.” Not a single word about Wall Street.

  6. joe

    BTW, RC, when there isn’t an actual argument, just a characterization, a subsequent characterization of the speaker can’t be an ad homenim, because the speaker never made an argument to try to refute, and his critic never said that any argument was false.

  7. Gabe Harris

    I am unbiased & I agree with Joe here. You have to be a tool to not understand Gramm is saying “the economy has been awesome! re-elect Cheney! look at these neat statistics we publish based on a BS GDP deflator…showing how strong our economy has been”if you think the economy has been hurt by the socialist warmongering parties known as Democrats and Republicans and a debt pyramid scam know as the federal reserve then you are a whiner”!

    only a neo-con or a cosmotard would interpret Gramm as arguing for small government in this case.

  8. Gabe Harris

    no offense to cosmotards and neo-cons in the crowd.

  9. joe

    From where Phil Gramm’s sitting, a bad economy means that absolutely nothing in his life changes except the seven-digit numbers on his Fidelity statement.

    And because that doesn’t cause him to complain, he interprets this to mean that he’s tougher and more virtuous than those people who do yelp when the economy turns bad.

  10. meg

    Check out the prize Gramm was awarded today by BuzzFlash for his economic hypocrisy: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/honors/063

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