The No-Ownership Society

I've got a new piece at The Guardian's Comment is free America, "Selling out the ownership society," about the GOP's refusal to own any of the policies that have led to the current economic crisis:

What is, perhaps, most unrelentingly galling about their affected posture is that, even as they disown, disclaim and distance themselves from Bush's economic policies and promote McCain as some sort of saviour, they refuse to acknowledge that his proposals are just more of the same conservative überfail that got us into this morass in the first place.

Had he brilliant economic proposals, or even different ones, it might legitimately warrant their abandonment of Bush and his antiquated fiscal sensibilities. But McCain is merely a new face on the same old swill. They won't own it with Bush's name stamped on it, but they'll line up behind near-identical policies in droves, hoping no one will notice – hoping to help sell those policies again to the American people.

It's stunning, really.

The hypocrisy of the personal responsibility brigade brazenly, utterly refusing to take responsibility for this mess, and the irony of these great champions of the ownership society flatly refusing to own the economic policies which have resulted in massive losses among American families, would be positively hilarious if it all weren't so goddamned tragic.

Read the whole thing here.