Of course by “government” they mean “a specific subset of programs for which there is firm evidence that they are less efficient than a pure ‘free market’ solution,” and emphatically not a phrase to simply be used as evidence in favor of cutting the programs you hate anyway. Right? Bueller?
I think that is an unprovable assertion, highly subject to confirmation bias.
But if you think you can prove it, I’m all ears.
But the part I quoted has become holy writ for the right. I have not heard the full quote before, but it doesn’t surprise me. We all know that Reagan would be considered too liberal to get nominated for anything in the Republican party these days. He saved Social Security and raised taxes, after all.
I’d call it more snappy slogan than holy writ. And I always interpreted it as a call for limited government, especially in the sense of not expanding government to deal with every problème du jour.
Tired of this dodge to what is obvious to anyone paying attention (and I suspect you are paying attention and just being difficult).
But at the end if someone demands facts they should get them so (bolding mine)…
You demanded cites so there you go. If you want to dispute it I want you to provide cites.
That’s nice, but do you have any cites for what was claimed? Saying “the government is too big and the national debt is too large” is hardly the same thing as saying “the government shouldn’t do anything”.
Just because my wife steals my pillows doesn’t mean I want her out of my bed altogether.
Regards,
Shodan
I already stipulated that Tea Baggers are not anarchists.
I have shown though that they decry “big government” and want government to be smaller.
The OP is following that line of reasoning to its absurd conclusion…government can’t do anything better than the private sector.
If you think government is bad and private business is good then follow that line and distinguish where government has a legitimate role.
Broad generalizations are not enough. Be specific. Use the reasoning that government is bad in certain roles and distinguish that from where it has a place and does it better than the private sector.
I still haven’t seen any cites that Tea Party members think that government is always bad and private business is always good. No one argues that.
And it does not logically follow that, if you think something is too large, that you necessarily believe that it shouldn’t exist at all.
I heard a whole shitload of complaints that Bush’s deficit was too large. Does that mean that therefore, we shouldn’t have a federal government at all?
“I don’t want that sofa - it won’t fit in my living room.” “OK, that means you don’t want a sofa at all.”
Come on, that’s ridiculous.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll try this once more with you.
No one is saying they are anarchists (I certainly am not) which is what you are trying to hang around our necks.
Read my previous post and try again.
I read it. You are arguing a strawman. Tea Party members do not hold the position that you are trying to assign to them, at least as far as your cites go.
Tea Partiers are not anarchists. Therefore, they do not hold the position that you are apparently trying to saddle them with.
All of your cites say the same thing - that they believe that the government is too large and spends too much, and that the deficit is too big. It is not logical to conclude that therefore they think the government is always bad.
When your doctor tells you to go on a diet, he is not advising you to starve yourself to death. Similarly, when Tea party members say the deficit is unsustainable, they are not saying that the government has no legitimate role to play.
There’s your problem - this is silly. “Government can’t do anything better than the private sector” does not follow logically from “government and the deficit should be smaller”.
Regards,
Shodan
Good grief…
Read the title of the thread again.
Reductio ad absurdum is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.
I did not say they think government is always bad and have said so more than once.
However, take their stance and walk it through to its logical conclusions.
Where is government “good”? Where is government’s proper role?
So far I am not seeing them draw a bright line and say, “This is the proper role of government by which we should all abide.”
I see a lot of vague, nebulous hand waving. However, from people who would like to hold power in government and impose their ideas on the rest of us, I want something more specific.
Tell me what a Tea Bagger, given god-like powers (i.e. wave their magic wand and get the government they think ideal), would do.
As it stands, if you follow their logic as expressed so far (read insanely vague, just do not like government) you are led to the absurd of no government (anarchy).
Be clear, I and NOT saying they want anarchy.
You tell me where it stops before anarchy per the Tea Bagger ideals.
No, you are not. Anarchy, as you appear to recognize, is not the logical conclusion of Tea Party ideals.
As Sam Stone points out, this kind of foolishness can be used for any political position. Obama wants to raise taxes, therefore he wants to change to a Marxist, centrally-run economy. Abortion supporters want to force all women to get abortions.
Like I said, a strawman.
Regards,
Shodan
The what is the Tea Party end game? When are taxes low enough that they will stop calling for lower taxes? When will spending be cut enough to end their calls for smaller government? When will government regulations be reduced so they will stop calling for less intrusive government?
Every article written about them, every thread we’ve had here about them, and every study done about them emphasizes the fact that the “Tea Party” is not a centrally run organization with clearly defined leaders and clearly defined goals. So the answer to your question is: it depends on the particular Tea Partier you’re talking about.
The closest thing to a TP manifesto is the Contract from America. But that is a general blueprint, more concerned with process than meeting specific goals.
Ok, then where do Republicans draw the line? From the study I linked to earlier:
*"However, as Gallup has pointed out, those who describe themselves as Tea Party supporters are in many ways indistinguishable from, and largely a subset of, Republican identifiers more generally.
As a result, Tea Party supporters’ issue concerns are not decidedly different from those of Republican identifiers. The two groups differ only slightly in their views of federal government debt and the size and power of the federal government among the 10 issues tested."*
Seems republicans are a close enough analog to TPers to be used as a proxy. Republicans are a centrally run organization with clearly defined leaders so where would they draw the line?
I would be satisfied with one Tea Partier addressing my points. I agree, they see it as a process. Unfortunately, it is a process without end, and they will eternally gripe about taxes, spending and regulations. The may not want to create anarchy and chaos, but I have yet to met a single one who be satisfied before that occurs. The Tea Party will cease to exist if a large portion of them conclude that taxes are low enough, government is small enough, and regulations are just right. And presently, there are forces on the Right who recognize an agitated Tea Party is a useful tool, and will continue to spare no expense to keep the Tea Party in a perpetual state of fear and anger.
I think the TPers are just going to be absorbed into the GOP. In fact, I think we’re seeing that happen already.
But I don’t get this idea that they need to have an end game. What is the end game for either the Democrats or Republicans? Do Denis Kucinich and Jane Harmon agree on what tax rates should be? What is the end game for the Blue Dog Democrats?
Thing is there is no flip side to this. There are no members of congress or serious candidates for congress who are saying, “Business is the problem, the government should take over.”
If there were then your question would be fair and relevant.
Yeah? And just when do you think Democrats will go, “You know, I think we have enough government. We’re good.” ?
The fact is, there’s a constant tug-of-war that goes on. Every time a problem crops up, someone thinks a government program needs to be created to fix it. And every time a tax is proposed, the other side says, “whoa! We need to be cutting taxes, not increasing them.”
As for how far the tea party wants to go, one obvious answer is that before Bush and Obama started ramping up the size of government dramatically, there was no tea party.
Balance the budget, get government spending back down to where it has historically been since 1970, and the Tea Party will vanish.
In Canada, our ‘tea party’ was the Reform party. It did exactly the same thing - it rebelled against the conservatives and ‘red tories’ - our RINOS. In our case, it split off into a new party, fractured the conservative vote, and allowed Liberals to rule for more than a decade.
They formed at almost exactly the same point as the Tea Party in the U.S. - when the debt reached 70% of GDP and government spending neared 50% of GDP.
However, in our case the Liberals actually listened, and began a program of spending cuts and deficit reduction. They got the deficit under control, then ran a surplus. They brought our deficit down from 70% of GDP to 30%. They reduced the size of government from 53% of GDP to 33% of GDP.
The result was that the Reform party lost its energy, and eventually re-formed with the Progressive Conservative party to make a new Conservative party. The Liberals eventually shot themselves in the foot with scandals, and the Conservatives won the election. And the leader of the party (and now Prime Minister of Canada) was one of the more vocal leaders calling for smaller government and lower taxes. But you know, he’s doing a pretty good job, and he’s not gutting the government. He reduced our national sales tax from 7% to 5%, and mucked about a bit with lower taxes here and there, but in general it’s business as usual, except on a smaller scale.
If Obama were Clinton, he’d triangulate, turn himself into a budget cutter, work to maintain the progressive policies he thinks are important while eliminating the less useful programs, and he’d be re-elected in a landslide and the Tea Party couldn’t do a damned thing.
And no one in the Tea Party is saying that the government should be eliminated. And you know it. I think you all know damned well that the Tea Party would have no legs if the government cut its size back to where it was in 1990 and balanced the budget.
This whole thread is a giant straw man.