Politics & Power Quote by Bradley A. Blakeman

“Exploited” is the tell: it frames the financial crisis not as a governing emergency but as an opportunistic heist. Blakeman’s intent is less to litigate specific policies than to delegitimize the motive behind them, turning stimulus, bailouts, and expanded regulation into a moral indictment. If the crisis is being exploited, then the response can’t be prudent or necessary; it’s inherently cynical, a pretext for ideological expansion.

The subtext is classic post-2008 backlash politics, when fear and uncertainty made big interventions possible and also made them easy to caricature. “Socialist” functions here as a cultural alarm bell more than a description; it collapses a messy mix of Keynesian stimulus, financial rescue, and incremental reforms into a single contaminated label. “Big government” adds a second smear layer, suggesting not just leftism but bloat, incompetence, and coercion. Even the verb stack “tax, spend and borrow” is engineered as a rhythmic rap sheet, evoking irresponsibility with the cadence of a slogan.

Context matters: this language is built for coalition-building among fiscal conservatives, business interests, and anti-Obama voters. It also anticipates a defensive rebuttal to technocratic arguments about stabilization and systemic risk. By asserting exploitation, Blakeman aims to shift the debate from outcomes (Did it prevent collapse? Did it save jobs?) to character and intent (Were they using a disaster to remake the country?). It’s a political move that turns policy disagreement into suspicion of power itself.