The Wanting Things Argument is Bizarre Even by Republican Standards →

One of the strangest memes to come out of the Republican Party in recent months has been their critique of Obama supporters as people who just want things, or stuff. This is an extraordinarily bizarre view of politics which lends itself to criticism in many different ways. This view, which has been stated by Bill O'Reilly and other Republican pundits and strategists, reflects shoddy math as advocates of this view, includingmost prominently Mitt Romney, throw around numbers like 47 percent as if that is both the number of people who get things from government and who voted for Obama.

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Rick Perry and Republican Magical Thinking →

The approaching collapse of Rick Perry's candidacy is not, in and of itself, particularly surprising, but the speed and lack of drama with which it occurred is striking. Perry, of course, is still in the race; and may recover his footing and grow to be a strong candidate, and even win his party's nomination, but that is looking increasingly unlikely. Perry was not undone by some unexpected revelation about his past or major political scandal, instead it is occurring simply because of his inability to make the transition to the national stage, unimpressive debate style and a defeat at the hands of Herman Cain in a minor non-binding straw poll that are contributing to his likely demise.

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Socialism for the Tea Parties →

Of course, using government resources to levy taxes and provide services including defense, infrastructure, education, economic incentives and programs is not socialism. It is governance. In America socialism is the bogeyman that is wheeled out from time to time to oppose programs that are viewed as too big or too costly, but even that is not entirely accurate. Defense buildups throughout the last decades have infused enormous amounts of money, through lucrative and often wasteful government contracts, into the economy, transferring hard earned tax dollars into profits and jobs, but nobody really calls that socialism

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Funding Medicare, Funding Health Care →

The serious points on which this argument is based are first that a public option or any other serious effort to provide health insurance to the millions of Americans who are currently without insurance will not be cheap. This is reasonably obvious. The question of whether the government should be making this type of spending commitment at this time is a legitimate question. However, it should also be kept in mind that a public option will likely save individual Americans, including but not limited to those currently uninsured, money as costs for health insurance and health care generally will likely drop if we have a more rational system for providing health insurance and care.

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Who Will Be Hurt if the Democrats Pass Health Care? →

Eight months or so into the Obama presidency, it is pretty clear that Obama's bipartisan efforts have not been, and will almost certainly not be, fruitful. Critics of Obama might claim this is because Obama has already been captured by the far left of his party, while people more sympathetic to the president might point out that the Republican Party has been captured by an angry and out of touch right wing that has driven the party to irrelevancy. The question this raises for the Obama administration is whether or not it is now prudent to abandon efforts at bipartisanship and seek to pass major legislation, most obviously health care, alone.

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Bobby Jindal, Dan Quayle and Socialist Health Care →

Bobby Jindal has "seen enough" and Dan Quayle thinks President Obama needs to "tame the left wing of his party." Perhaps it is time to give the Republican Party some credit for consistency, if not exactly relevancy or accuracy. Dan Quayle, who has gracefully made the transition from boy wonder vice president to elder statesman of his party without pausing along the way to actually accomplish anything, and Bobby Jindal, who seems to have succeeded in combining the politics of Ronald Reagan with the earnestness and credibility of Ronald McDonald, seem to agree that the biggest threat to the country is that President Obama will pass health care reform and lead the country irrevocably down the road to socialism.

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Written by Lincoln Mitchell On In Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,