That was once the case. It is no longer. After the 2004 election, GWBush surprised the country with a phase-out plan for social security. It went nowhere, but it had profound implications for social welfare.
Paul Ryan proposed a phase-out plan for Medicare in 2011. It passed the House with unanimous Republican support. And his budget adds further tax cuts for high incomes, on top of the already unaffordable ones pushed by George W. Bush. Those tax cuts are funded by magic asterisks, or hand-waving about massive cuts to discretionary spending.
The Democrats are a coalition of liberals, moderates and conservatives. Washington Republicans are extremists, crazies and those who fear being primaried by the same.
One problem with the article linked to in the OP is it assumes that DC proposals and the Republican base are in sync. What it misses is the essential tribalism of the GOP: the base simply doesn’t believe that the proposals are as far reaching as they actually are. There’s a fair amount of naivite within the modern conservative mentality, as well a dash of weak character. After all, the consistent factual inaccuracy of Fox News is well established, but some conservatives need to watch it for reassurance. You have to be pretty messed in the head to be willingly and happily deceived, right? I blame the self-esteem movement: just because something feels good, doesn’t absolve you from responsible behavior.
No; conservatives tend to regard any unfairness of society as being due to the losers being incompetent, weak, lazy, evil, or simply them being the enemies of God. And they want the government to enforce that unfairness, to ensure that the people on the bottom stay there. On the other hand, they are anything but “accepting” the unfairness of life when it goes against them. If life is “unfair” to them, they don’t accept it, they blame it on enemy action; it’s the fault of the Jews, of gays, of blacks, of the poor, or of one of the other groups they hate.
I present an extreme caricature of Liberal thinking, specifically to say that nobody is really avocating it … and you get upset that I’m strawmanning.
I present an absurd caricature of conservative thinking, specifically to say that nobody is really avocating it … and you insist that it is what conservatives advocate.
Tells me all I need to know right there.
But Ryan’s scheme is nowhere near truly regressive, and advocates changing the way we give money to seniors, not eliminating it entirely.
A candidate who advocated eliminating medical aid for seniors – such that an old person who can’t afford medical care relies solely on private charity with no help whatsoever from any governmental body – wouldn’t get out of the Republican Primary. Paul Ryan isn’t saying that. Ron Paul isn’t saying that. Nobody is saying that, and it’s only overheated political rhetoric that makes people think anyone is. Ditto for medicaid, social security and all the other benefits. It’s perfectly possible to have a functioning nation without all those things (we didn’t have any of them a hundred years ago), but there is essentially universal support for the idea of a social safety net. Our arguments are solely about how big said net should be, and how it should be designed.
Similarly, nobody is advocating a regressive tax – say 30% on the first $20,000, 20% on the next 200,000, 10% on the next 2 million and no tax at all above that. The very idea seems absurd. It would be perfectly viable as a matter of sheer economics; some economists would argue it might be more efficient. But it would strike everyone, including conservatives, as grotesquely unfair. Even the people who advocate a flat tax say they want a very large exemption, so that everything under say $15k is untaxable, and the elimination of a whole host of credits currently available to the wealthy in order to offset the lower rates on high earners. It’s perfectly possible to have a functioning nation without progressive taxation (several nations already do), but there is essentially universal support for progressive tax rates. Our arguments are solely about how progressive they should be.
Paul Ryan’s proposed cuts – however harshly draconian you want to characterize them as – really boil down to tweaking the rates, not to changing the fundamental structure.