If You Don't Change, You Won't Change

I think that when people used to think of the GOP they thought of small government / strong military / family values.  And that was a simple formula that people understood and could relate with.  The GOP has strayed:

1. By mismanging Iraq and reacting slowly to failures played out in the media, they made the GOP appear incompetent to manage a strong military.

2. Growing the deficit...

3. By basically eliminating taxes for 50% of the populations this removes the immedicay of the tax issue for 50% of America.  Most people don't understand that corporate taxes and taxes on business owners go down to them eventually.

4. Terry Schiavo.  We should have focused on getting vouchers out instead of this case.  It further marginalized the GOP.  With Bill Frist diagnosing her on TV it made the GOP look like a circus act.

5. Not reforming and shrinking government when we had the chance.

On a presonal note, I used to give money to the GOP because I beleived it would make the nation better and provide a better business environment.  Now I still won't vote for an actively socialist candidate like Omaba, but the passion is gone. 

are non-conservatives allowed to post here? I know on redstates we are chased away with pitchforks.

Good journalism is not "fair and balanced." It is truthful and accurate.

Not that the media often adhere to this. Too often they are scurrying to quote someone who denies that the earth is round, to get a "balance" of voices on an issue. But in the glare of overwhelming evidence, the media won't ignore the obvious.

This election cycle they are no more being "biased" against the McCain campaign than they have been against, say, O.J. Simpson. I am not equating McCain and O.J., except insofar as McCain's campaign is a DOG, just like O.J.'s transparent defenses.

There are other factors at play, of course. The herd mentality, for example. And don't forget, it wasn't that long ago that McCain himself was THE media darling. MORe than one reporter admits dismay over the Straight Talk Express turning into a cynical, negative, smear-ridden bus to nowheresville.

I'm a 28 year old undeclared voter from Massachusetts. This is going to be long.

Here's a story for you to justify my comments here. I spent 4 years in Austria (2003-2007), earning my PhD. It's a hard science PhD, so students get a monthly stipend, a.k.a. a salary -- just like what happenes here in the USA. And of course, we pay Austrian taxes on that salary, a portion of which is an unemployment insurance tax. What I found interesting is how EU-member students feel about that tax, which makes me strongly dislike this particular facet of social democracy.

Basically, after finishing the thesis defense, the PhD contract would end, and the students would stop earning their salary. One would think that a freshly minted PhD student would be hustling on to the next job opportunity to make sure they could keep supporting themselves. I sure was -- we all graduated from a top notch institute, so jobs aren't hard to find, in Austria or any other country. But a large number of the EU-member students said, "well, I think I need a 6 month vacation to recover from that strenuous PhD, so I'll just go on unemployment for awhile."

This leaning back and letting the government support them while they relaxed just shocked me, since it would be easy for them to find a very good job indeed. Not only was this completely socially acceptable, to take unemployment benefits when they weren't necessary. But people even felt justified in doing this, because after all, they had paid that tax, and that's what it's there for. To support the newly minted PhD student while he/she recovers from that strenuous academic achievement.

There's a lot that I learned in my total five years abroad (1 year in Germany, 4 years in Austria), and it made me feel more American than I've ever felt in my life. I came away from those years with a general sense (that I can not justify with anything better than anecdotes) that the social democracy over there is too coddling in many respects, and makes it so when people have problems the first place they look is to the government. And that the relatively hands-off democracy that we have over here endows citizens with a can-do, will-do attitude that fosters greater independence, and a willingness to help themselves.

But. I am voting a straight Democratic ticket this election.

As much as I disliked many facets of the European social democracy, I believe that there are some problems that are too big for people to handle alone, and where government intervention is required. Take health care. People will have a hell of a time helping themselves if they're not healthy first. The current health care market excludes people with pre-existing conditions, and it is hellaciously expensive to receive even preventative care. Free market solutions are not controlling costs. If we want poor, umemployed folks to help themselves out, get a job, get on their feet again, how can we expect them to do that effectively if years without health care has left them with a host of preventable illnesses? Isn't this a place where government could ensure that everybody has access to affordable health care? I don't want to force everybody to adhere to some artificial standards of health, but why not make sure that people can see doctors and treat preventable illnesses if they need to?

While the Republican cries for 'smaller government' are admirable in principle -- because I don't want us to turn into a bunch of spoiled, coddled citizens, and I don't want to pay for waste -- they usually don't acknowledge that there are some areas where government is needed. (Except for running the military, of course, and rightly so.) I could see myself voting GOP in the future if someone acknolwedged that not all government is bad -- that we need it for things like maintaining the rule of law, physical infrastructure, and basic health and security. And the GOP has to knock it off with this anti-intellectual, we only like Christians baloney, but that would be a topic for another post.

There are a lot of points here, but we seem to have shied away from a potential platform for a conservative party that people could subscribe to.  A common sense party of conservatism that people scratch their heads and go "gee, why hasn't that been done before?"

The Contract with America was popular and worked, but it fell apart because those people in Washington lost their way.  The compass went awry and the people in power got greedy and corrupt.  To be sure, the following "platform" is somewhat controversial, but I think that it's simplicity is what would make it appealing. 

We all have differing opinions of common sense, to be sure, but I and many people I've talked to agree it's sensical enough

1.  Term Limits.  Two for President, Four for Congressmen.  Three for Senators.  This would accomplish several things pretty quickly, but almost immediately it would help lessen the pork barrel spending that exists because no longer would there be a need for sitting representatives to bribe their people back home to keep themselves in office.  States like West "Everything Named Byrd" Virginia and Alaska "Stevens' and Young's Super Outdoor Adventure" might suffer, but they managed before their representatives got there, and it would significantly help the national debt to not have the level of spending that occurs.  Additionally, it would give greater emphasis and strength to the people to pay attention to politics and the kind of representation they have in Washington.

2.  Decrease the Size of Government by 15%.  This isn't a cut in benefits as much as it's a massive layoff of unnecessary people.  Imagine a private company that operated as inefficiently as our federal government does.  There needs to be a top to bottom review of every job and combine those jobs that are simply unnecessary.  (For instance, if you have two jobs that are similar or nearly similar but which through economies of scale could be done by one person, then layoff one, give the other person a 50% raise and you're still saving 50% of a salary.)

3.  Completely Privatize Education.  This is not, however, a privatization of standards, but rather, a privatization of the delivery of education.  Colleges and universities are private entities that do quite well for themselves.  There's no reason that their success cannot be duplicated on an elementary and secondary level.  Sweden has done it with companies like IKEA with a pretty decent amount of success.  Attach the money to the students, tell the companies that the students have to hit the benchmarks, and any money from the vouchers the companies save is their profit.  Parents can choose their schools and let the companies pick up the funding to bus kids to their school if the parents want their child to go there, since from a business case if they're good enough and effective enough, it will be worth their while to have as many customers as possible.

4.  Rename the Department of Defense and Homeland Security to War and Defense (respectively).  This may seem like a superficial concept, and perhaps costly in execution, but it would change the manner in which we conduct business throughout the world and domestically as well as the way in which we defend ourselves against terrorists.  Our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have been un-conservative but certainly necessary (based upon the intelligence and information available at the time), but they were not matters of defense.  They were acts of war and should not be disguised in Newspeak.  We need a government that is clear to our people and straightforward in our intentions.  By renaming these departments, we could then target our funding and budgetary needs according to the wishes of the people.  To be sure, I am not advocating cutting our military's budget, because we need a strong military to ensure our protection (Si vis pacem, para bellum... if you want peace, prepare for war).  But let us not disguise this budget from the people.

5.  Voter ID.  Require voters to show ID.  It's simple, it's fair, and the vast majority of Americans agree with this proposition.

6.  Social Security.  Someone has to break the bad news to the American people: there's not enough money in the pot for everyone.  Allow the people a chance to decide what they want to do.  Each one.  They can raise the retirement age for themselves, cut their benefits and make them up somewhere else, or cut themselves out entirely and go a different route.  But that decision should be up to them.  Let them decide.  Each one of them at an age when they can make the decision.  Not 18 or 21, but 30 or 35.  When they have families and have to start planning for their retirement and still have thirty years to decide.  Those above that point can do it to.  Make it a binding, legal decision.  Use a notary to seal it, but make it something that holds.

7.  Medicare and Medicaid.  These, too, need to be considered and should be privatized like education.  Let the senior and the disabled choose their plan and have the government send their money to the private sector.  It would bolster the sector (stock market, economy, etc.) and at the same time allow for the costs to drop through competition.  Currently, the government is a free check and gets charged whatever the provider thinks they can get away with.  A private sector insurance provider would be different.

So there are my thoughts for a seven-point platform.  I'll be interested to see how it gets torn apart in this forum.

Why "must" government's involvement in education end?

Do you see a lot of people looking at Blackwater getting $100 per bag of laundry they do in Iraq and saying "well, that's certainly an improvement over the old system"?

90% of the children in America are in public school. In the name of ideology you want to uproot the current system and replace it with a for-profit system. Good luck selling that idea in the current climate of fear and loathing of Wall Street. And further good luck in convincing small town America that it is OK for a corporation - funded entirely by tax dollars - to come in a take control of the town's central asset.

For the sake of efficiency, I'm sure you not one a different corporation for each school - even if it started out that way consolidations would occur and soon you'd have Company A controlling all the schools in a wide geographic area. And when Company A starts deciding which school will get the championship winning football coach and which will get the rookie straight out of some 5th-rate college, there will pitchforks in the streets in Texas.

Sorry if I offended you, but expecting rural America suffer in order to fix inner city schools is not just wrong, it is the wrong politics.