What are the conservatives going to have to give up if they admit the Garbage Pail bailout is necessary? Only their single most cherished belief, as expressed by their favorite plaster saint:
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Now we’ve got the entire financial services sector begging for help from the government, and claiming that if they don’t get that help the wheels will come off the economy. And no, I don’t promise not to rub the conservatives’ noses in that fact for the rest of my natural life, and longer if I can figure out how.
As a result, every conservative thinker and institution is going to want to be able to claim afterwards that the whole thing wasn’t necessary. To admit otherwise would be to declare intellectual bankruptcy.
