Editorials

The Bush administration's seven-plus years have been about stealthly undoing the giant knot created by Franklin D. Roosevelt. George W. Bush, his supporters and advisers and large parts of the Republican Party are beating back what they see as a monster of government regulation that stifles the economy and the people of the United States.

No secret conspiracy involving the top levels of government and their wealthy benefactors exists to destroy the New Deal. Both the libertarian, anti-New Deal ideologues leading the charge and the politicians they put in office prefer to soft-pedal their dismantling of government regulations. In fact, most adherents hate the label "Constitution-in-Exile" that has been attached to their effort.

Still, the proof is in their deeds. Far too few Republicans have ever seen a minimum-wage increase they favored. Even fewer promote tough and adequate regulations to protect consumers at their dining table, workplace, bank, water faucet, medicine cabinet, automobile or children's day care, to name just a few areas where a decades-long movement to knock down the New Deal has succeeded.

Conservative thinker Michael Greve told The New York Times in 2005, "I think what is really needed here is a fundamental intellectual assault on the entire New Deal edifice. ... We want to withdraw judicial support for the entire modern welfare state. I'd retire and play golf if I could get there."

It's handy to keep this in mind when listening to GOP politicians talk about the current economic slump.

President Bush, speaking at a news conference last week, furrowed his brow and described the economy at various times as "difficult," "tough" and "sour." His so-called solutions included taking more wilderness out from under U.S. protection in order to drill oil wells.

Speaking last month, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Anniston, as-cribed economic worries to a "national funk that's fallen over people." He added, "Markets aren't bad, there are bad feelings."

The country needs politicians who will speak forcefully about the fundamentals, not dance around the issues, or worse, attribute hard times to mere perceptions.

Unregulated financial speculation tossed the country into the Great Depression. The same sort of unregulated environment led to unsustainable home-lending practices, which in turn put the nation in its current mortgage crisis. It's evident in the federal government's pitiful response to Hurricane Katrina.

Watch for a similar result as a by-product of anti-consumer bankruptcy laws pushed by Bush and his fellow Republicans in 2005.

We've already seen what the mindset does to a local woman named Lilly Ledbetter, who never got a fair hearing on her claims of gender bias at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in Gadsden. The working man or woman often gets the short end of the stick from the Constitution-in-Exile crowd, as they often did before the New Deal.

It's wrong to allow Democratic politicians and other progressives to escape part of the blame. Their defense of the New Deal has been weak and ineffective.

If there's hope it's that the New Deal grew from the results of anti-regulation policies. The nation appears to be on the brink of reaping the same sort of pain once more. Time will tell if the remedy will be another, stronger New Deal.