Who decided that the religious right gets to drive this bus? Or groups chanting ‘yes we can’ while praying for the day when they won’t have to take money from their pocket to pay their mortgage or gas bills? Or any fringe group for that matter? How did we get to this point? The country is so split into these two camps that every election is a virtual 50/50 split that is ultimately decided by some fringe group. Those people are arguably the least qualified to plot an objective course to successfully address any of the problems we are faced with. We need some entitlements, we need so cuts too. Can someone in charge lead on this and get to work sometime before my kids turn 70? So Putin, would have been cool had it not been for Bush’s policies? Wow, I knew bush sucked and everything but that is a new one. That Russia is the 3rd most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist, that regional gov’ts have been reduced, that the houses of Russian parliament have been emasculated, human rights, freedom, etc. etc… all Bush’s fault… interesting.
Wow, bchadwick shows up like a Kennedy liberal. 1) Any particular thing I complain about will be only a small percentage of abuses. 2) The Social Security system is insolvent as you well know. 3) My wife used to take Medicare in her psychology practice. Think she treats depressive old people suffering with cancer and memories of Hoover? Not usually. She treats retired Greenwich lawyers and corporate big shots who are having trouble with erectile dysfunction, balancing their sex lives with mistresses, drinking problems because of boredom, etc… Medicare doesn’t give a hoot and just pays up for any diagnosis. Do you think that we have a national interest in borrowing money to pay for treating someone’s discomfort at how difficult his life has become balancing his mistresses simply because he planned his life somehow predicated on the notion that we would pay? How about fixing up “entitlements” into “individual bailouts”? SS: 1) Strict income and net worth limits. My mother does not need a $1200 check every month from Social Security. She spends it on trips to Greece. That is not in the national interest. 2) Recognize that there is no SS trust fund and that this is a taxpayer funded program. Lets get the accounting right. Medicare: 1) Farm this out to anybody. Anthem of CT does a better job of supervising care than Medicare does. 2) Put limits on what is treatable, not how it is treated. We do not have a national interest in treating anything that a doctor thinks is treatable. 3) Put similar income and net worth limits. 4) Let people die. Medicare spends an extraordinary amount of money on end-of-life care that people are ambivalent about. Want to have this operation and stay alive another 3 weeks? $48,000 but Medicare pays. Medicaid: 1) Ditto #2 and #4 up there. Fortunately Medicaid pays so poorly few places take it. Food Stamps: 1) Make only a limited selection of foods food stamp eligible. No Hostess Fruit Pies with my tax dollars. Welfare: 1) You have to work to collect it unless there is a very compelling reason you can’t. Etc, etc.
> So Putin, would have been cool had it not been for > Bush’s policies? Wow, I knew bush sucked and > everything but that is a new one. That Russia is > the 3rd most dangerous place in the world to be a > journalist, that regional gov’ts have been > reduced, that the houses of Russian parliament > have been emasculated, human rights, freedom, etc. > etc… all Bush’s fault… interesting. Frankly, I wonder what would be left of Republican ideology if they did start to question the Reagan legacy and reinvented their platform. I think an implication from The Economist article is that a lot of the rot in the Republican party started in the Reagan era (deficits don’t matter, courting the religious right, military-heavy foreign policy). I grant you that the policies of McCain and Bush may not be 100% Reagan, still that’s like saying that St. Augustine was not really a Christian because he didn’t just quote Jesus. Bush, McCain and virtually every other Republican big shot consider themselves to be a true disciple of Reagan and he is a still a sacred cow in the party. One of the reasons Clinton was successful is that he broke with the worst elements of the Democrats’ platform. Frankly, Americans proved in this election that they regard these aspects of Reaganism cited above to be failed policies. I see it gets under people’s skins to say that, but if you have a hard time questioning this, maybe you’ve booked your ticket on the ship of fools. I want to return briefly this whole aspect of hard vs. soft power. Hard power has a miserable track record with encouraging world democracy and turning enemy regimes into friendly ones. After 8 years of Bush’s hyper-Reaganism, we see more authoritarian regimes than ever before, more anti-Americanism, and our allies are less helpful. Our hard approach to Cuba has been a gift to Castro for decades. I believe that the following is a powerful indictment of that approach. Yeltsin was converted to being a capitalist after visiting an American supermarket—NOT because of SDI or Reagan’s anti-Soviet bluster. Note the date on the quotation below—the Soviet Union was still alive, Gorbachev was still in power, Reagan was retired. During a visit to the United States in 1989 he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by its centralized, state-run economic system, where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare. He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans. Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.” He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’ ” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/europe/23cnd-yeltsin.htm
Well, I see where this discussion is headed. I have no difficulty whatsoever pointing out failure of any politician or philosophy when it is reasonable to do so. Which has been my main point. It is my opinion at this time that both sides are captaining the same sinking ship. And those that think their side, whichever side it may be, holds all the solutions, well they are the fools, my friend. Still, I can’t help but continue this discussion since I am not convinced that the current environment is proof that economic conservatism is a failed philosophy. So here it goes. "Frankly, Americans proved in this election that they regard these aspects of Reaganism cited above to be failed policies. I see it gets under people’s skins to say that, but if you have a hard time questioning this, maybe you’ve booked your ticket on the ship of fools. " Really? Americans proved that? First off it was the popular vote went around 53%/46%. So that is not entirely indicative of some kind of mandate. But that aside, I think it is fair to say this election was a referendum on the last 8-years. From the start the theme was change, label McCain bush 2.0 and run with it. That was a no-brainer given the approval #'s… Anyway I digress, for your claim to hold, first you have to support that McCain and Bush have identical philosophies, which they do not, and second you have to support that Bush and Reagan had identical philosophies, which they did not. This second point has been our focus. Without getting into the details or re-hashing previous posts, I feel JDV spelled it out straightforward enough “If Reaganomics as a belief is supply-side economics and the dead-weight loss of taxation, I am an economic Reagan Republican.” That is a reasonable assessment and a philosophy I agree with it. Bush can call whoever he wants his muse, fact is his economic policies have differed plainly from Reagan’s. To be brief, Bush has increased both domestic and military spending and raised debt “without regard to global economic conditions.” So, with the exception of tax cuts, I find it difficult to categorize clearly distinct philosophies as one and the same. I mentioned I consider myself an economic conservative. I did not mention any allegiance to the republican party as in their present form they are no more conservative than Putin is for freedom of the press. Which gets us to hard v. soft power. The Bush doctrine has been judged a failure. History will be the final judge, but I think failure is a fair assessment right now. On this I agree the election made a clear statement. But by no stretch was a preemptive invasion, regime change, global war on terror with multiple fronts, etc. by no stretch was this the Reagan doctrine and to label it “Bush’s hyper-Reaganism” is an gleeful attempt to discredit rather than to objectively assess two distinct approaches to being the leader of the free world. In other parallel universes they are discussing the absolute successes of the Kerry Doctrine, or the Gore Doctrine… yeah right. And in that universe a remarkably open-minded and very pro-Western ex KGB spy is president of a democratic country, flourishing in a robust economy, with a free press, representative local gov’ts, and so on, because Bush’s policies were never present to “turn him in another direction”.
I think most people here would consider themselves fiscal conservatives, so if you are going to respond to people’s positions, try to get them right without distortions and exaggerations. I suppose you’re right that history will be the judge, but what we have to work with is the facts we see. Maybe there’s a world out there where every town in Iraq has a street named after W., but right now it sure looks like a disaster. And the facts sure don’t seem to suggest that the policies of the current administration have fostered democracy around the world. And looking at the facts I have already written about, I don’t see how you can make the argument that Reagan won the Cold War. Of course, he was a player in how that story was written but lets not run wild with that. By the way, can you tell me how to get to those parallel universes where the Gore and Kerry doctrines had their day in court? After 8 years of Bush, I’d like to give one of those a shot.
Let me apologize if I distorted your position. My comments should have been more precise. The recent election was not proof by Americans that they regard aspects of Reagan’s domestic and foreign policy to be failed policies, as you have claimed. It was proof that after 8 years, Americans regard Bush’s domestic and foreign policy as a failure. Debating whether Reagan himself did or did not win the cold war is fruitless. That the scales tipped while he was in charge is, however, easy to support. "By the way, can you tell me how to get to those parallel universes where the Gore and Kerry doctrines had their day in court? " Carter was president for a little bit? domestic and global bliss as I recall. Oh and, Kerry is set to chair the foreign relations com. So we can sit tight and get a little glimpse anyway.