Will the New Deal & Great Society programs survive another 20-30 years?

[DevotedDemocrat]

Do you think the Tea Partiers will be able to be stopped from dismantling the New Deal and Great Society?

[TJ in Oregon]

I don't see the Tea Partiers gaining enough power to actually do that.

But I can see the programs failing regardless if they aren't financially solvent into the future. Large promised sums of money paid to future retirees based on a model of indefinite growth doesn't always turn out so well. See the American auto industry as an example. To ensure the New Deal and Great Society Programs remain solvent into the future, we're going to have to go through some restructurings somewhere along the way, and when we do no one will want to. The political consequences of various interest groups will make it a messy endeavor indeed.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Did LBJ Revivalist get a new account?

[Antonio the Sixth]

If the neoliberal right is not stopped, within a couple of decades the Western world will have regressed to a proto-industrial society without any welfare State where the poor are left to starve while 1%ers make more money than any person would need to fulfill even their most foolish desires. That said, I'm fairly confident that the forces of progress will wake up before it's too late and crush the right.

[Blue3]

Do you think the Tea Partiers will be able to be stopped from dismantling the New Deal and Great Society?

Be able to be stopped?

Will they ever figure out how to get up and start going on even the most basic functions of governance?

[pbrower2a]

They will be transformed into different institutions with new constituencies and new methods, adjusting to changing realities of economics. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

Did LBJ Revivalist get a new account?

     That was my immediate reaction to this topic.

[Sbane]

The new deal policies will be fine. The Democrats need to stand fast against changing anything unless they are accompanied by tax increases on the rich and upper middle class. Especially when Obama is out of the picture, the Democrats will gain massive leverage over the Republicans on Medicare and Social Security (because old whites don't trust a black, unfortunately). Republicans don't even understand what is coming towards them. Old people really, really like Medicare and like  social security even more. If Obama stalls on changing them in his years (which he can easily do since the Republicans won't budge on tax hikes), it will lead to a lot more pain in subsequent years for the Republicans. They would be better off making a deal with Obama, but they won't, because they are delusional. Republicans don't understand how screwed they are in the long run.

[Reaganfan]

It's tough to say. I agree with TJ that I highly doubt the Tea Party is powerful enough to do it. I sort of believe that liberalism, even when it seems beneficial, is actually detrimental in the long run. In many ways, I believe the great liberalism of the 60s and 70s led to the wave of conservatism in the 80s, 90s and even today. Whether it's 1980, 1984, 1994, 2002, 2004 or 2010...Republicans have had much better luck, especially statewide and in Congress than they ever had for much of the 60s and 70s.

[bballrox4717]

Yes. Bush couldn't make any changes to Social Security despite having majorities in both houses of Congress, and Ryan's Medicare reform had a large amount of backlash.

[TNF]

[Antonio the Sixth]

In the meantime, the "tiny splinter group" has taken over the GOP.