Bills Come Due

A friend recently asked me to summarize why conservatives seem to be in such disarray these days. I listed four reasons, in separate paragraphs; "BIlls come due," was how I began the fourth:

Much of what conservatives do in power--or, if not in power, much of the way conservatives use minority power to obstruct--involves starving public goods in a way that feels good in the present (low taxes!) with consequences only apparent in the future. To take a blunt example, the waste-water infrastructure built during America's great postwar era of public investment was designed to last fifty years. Tax-cut mania coincided with the precise moment that those fifty years are up. So America is falling apart. Why conservative disarray? I imagine that on some level conservatives grasp these consequences.

Never forget the D-minus, [1] as I always remind loyal readers. Now (h/t Atrios) the mainstream media is starting to get the picture [2]. Best quote: "Everybody is drinking somebody else's waste water." Best seven-word rebuke of the threadbare ideology of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps conservatism I've ever heard.