The President, Senate Majority Leader, House Speaker and Majority Leader, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are all conservative. The entire federal government is in the hands of the right wing. Deal with it. You conservatives need to give up this “oppressed minority” fantasy and live in the real world. You have won. Just because conservative politicians aren’t highlighting those aspects of conservatism that you would prefer doesn’t mean they aren’t conservative. Elected officials have to get into office and stay there to get things done you know. Demagoging, gerrymandering, lying, cheating, and fraud only goes so far in an election. At some point you have to appeal to moderates.
You might also consider the possibility that your leaders are pursuing your shared goals in a more complex path than you have understood. Try a google search on +“conservatives” and +“starve the beast” for instance.
I think the ‘starving the beast’ hypothesis is plausible. But I think the ‘cut taxes now, spend taxes now, get reelected now, let someone else worry about debt and deficit’ hypothesis is more plausible.
Thank you for the serious response, SimonX.
Suppose war had a high probability of removing Saddam from power. Suppose other means had lower probabilities of removing him from power. Suppose doing nothing at all involves some probability of Saddam’s removal (natural mortality, spontaneous internal coup, whatever), presumably lower still.
SimonX, are you going to argue that just because non-war methods had some non-zero probability of removing Saddam from power that it was consequentially equivalent to a war method with greater probability of removing Saddam?
That would seem to be a very strange kind of argument to make. This would be like saying “Well, playing one shot of Russian Roulette with one bullet in six chambers is consequentially equivalent to playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in six chambers.”
If a farmer says “I’m Pro-Farmer, and I don’t intend to give up my water rights, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti-Fish. In fact, I’m Pro-Fish too.” we would seriously suspect that the claim that he’s Pro-Fish is not serious. If he were seriously pro-Fish, he’d be willing to put his money where his mouth was.