Over the last year, I’ve seen the Democratic Party, with a majority in both houses and a strongly liberal President, pass a national healthcare bill in a very nasty way. And while I am still waiting to see if the challenge to the individual mandate goes to the SCOTUS and how they rule on it and whether or not they’ll strike the individual mandate (which I’m betting against) and still looking towards financial reform and cap and trade I think that one thing has been firmly established by all this that makes me feel optimistic. They’ve firmly established that the Constitution is absolutely irrelevant to a majority of Americans both liberal and conservative. It’s all about the votes.
This makes me feel optimistic because I see the polls and I know that the Republicans are getting strong support both at a grassroots and at a mainstream level and I know that if the Republicans can get strong enough majorities in both houses of congress and get a conservative Republican President, that they will have the power to repeal every single thing the Democrats have done and will do under Obama.
The Democrats think that they’re the only ones who know how to play a dirty game and they’re also betting that Obamacare will never be repealed because the history of entitlements shows that while they always become more expensive than originally projected, they also get more and more popular over time to the point where they become untouchable. But most of this one doesn’t go into effect until 2014. So there is time before people get a chance to get addicted to a new government program. If the Republicans get strong majorities in both houses of Congress and they can win the Presidential Office I think repeal will be possible and the dirty game can get played back at the Democrats.
Now I assume that libertarians will not find this pleasant no matter which way it goes but at least they will be vindicated on one point if I am correct. The libertarians have been saying that the Constitution is irrelevant for a long time, the majority seems to be strongly agreeing with them now.
If you can show me anywhere in the West where Social Democrats / Progressives have been actually factually firmly been beaten simultaneously on policy and propaganda (a school text, MSM, etc will actually admit that progressive legislation was wrong and that right wing legislation was right) and not just delayed let me know. I know of no examples.
The “Conservatives” will not save you. They are just as happy with big government as the Liberals are. Bush was all for smaller government and less government intrusion into private life except in the areas of:
Mass Murder, 2. Medicine and Health Care.-He passed a completely new entitlement program and vastly expanded all government give away programs, 3. Education, 4. Law Enforcement, 5. Domestic Government Spying, 6. Wealth Redistribution from poor to extremely rich, 7. Wealth redistribution from poor to somewhat rich bureaucrats, 8. Business regulation, 9. Banking regulation, etc.
While the Republicans’ policies might not be QUITE as bad as the Democrats, they may actually be more damaging long-term because so many still equate them with “capitalism” and “free enterprise”, which then get a bad rap.
Maybe so, but I’m not so much concerned with the battle over rhetoric right now as I am over the battle over healthcare. This is another thing I’ll worry about down the road.
I think what they’re going to run on is repeal and replace. So they might repeal Obamacare but the majority, on both sides, has already accepted that the status quo is unacceptable and that they don’t want more free markets, they want less free markets. So yes, there will be some kind of government intervention, but it will probably look much different than Obamacare.
Well what they run on and what they do are two different things. I agree with you that they will use the issue to get elected. They may change the name and a few of the more controversial items, but they will replace what they remove with more. No real differences in substance, only in the politics and whose back is scratched.
I’m not as cynical as you are, I was reading an article in National Review about alternatives and I’ve seen lots of Republicans pushing for competition across state lines and personal health savings accounts, things like that. But I mean you could be right, we shall see. I have not lost faith in my favorite party yet.
It was early on that I saw that both parties used government power to promote and protect their interests at the expense of everyone else. But I was always much closer to the republicans than democrats.
Bush was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I really hoped that with the election of a republican president and control congress that we were on the edge of an era of less government. After all that is what they ran on.
Of course they can’t. They do not want to anger the Big Pharma, Big Insurance and Medical Device lobbies. There is a ton of stuff in this disaster for these groups and they are licking their chops at getting their fair share.
Like Lew Rockwell points out: The Republican Party has never gotten rid of anything. They are simply not willing to do what is necessary. And this includes the Reagan-Goldwater wing. The Eiseinhower-Nixon-Ford-Bush-Bush wing of Country Club Republicans are worse in many ways than the Democrats.
And the latest hero Scott Brown and his old partner Romney passed Romney Care which looks eerily similar to Obama Care. Brown has also been a Republican vote in several “Stimulus” bills as well.
I don’t mind Romneycare because it was done at the state level. To me, that seems to be in line with the 10th amendment (including the ban on pre-existing conditions and the subsidies and the individual mandate) because any power that’s not expressly given to the federal government is supposed to be reserved to the states. If every state had been allowed to choose whether or not it wanted a Romney care like program, that would be more sensible imo. I think the red states wouldn’t have adopted it and the blue states would have and the liberals would have gotten what they want without having to push their agenda on the conservatives.
Brown is toeing the moderate line. I would prefer he didn’t but I’m sure he understands his constituents better than I do.