the 'Ten Conservative Principles': worth debating?

[elucidator]

Sometimes they are altogether too sincere. Like that stuff about “victory”. Makes me nervous. Heard it before. Didn’t much like how it turned out.

[Chronos]

Quoth adaher:

While we’re at it, why don’t we look at the military. It’s clear we need one. And it’s really, really good. It also costs $500 billion. You’d be amazed at how good something can be if you are willing to throw unlimited funds at it and don’t worry too much about waste. And boy, can the Pentagon waste money! Same goes for the space program. Billions upon billions of dollars has made it look pretty sexy. Yet a couple of kids from Spain managed to spend $100 and take pictures of space using a weather balloon. A couple of tech geeks managed to win the X-prize for a tiny fraction of what the government spends to put something into space. And this is what government does WELL!

Not only can private industry not launch satellites into orbit cheaper than governments, they can’t do it at all. A balloon and a ballistic suborbital flight are neither one a satellite, and while both can be done cheaply by private industry, they can also both be done cheaply by governments. And even if the entire space program were completely free, the savings would be a drop in the bucket compared to military spending.

[Knorf]

Receiving an ear-mark to help out your constituents != a bribe.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@Knorf

Receiving an ear-mark to help out your constituents != a bribe.

That includes Mary Landrieu, right?

(Note: question not directed at you, and I realize Carol Stream isn’t necessarily representative of anyone/anything other than Carol Stream.)

[foolsguinea]

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
I used to believe in this, or think I did. But now I realize, as a law-&-order statist conservat[del]ive[/del]ionist, I believe in large government & high taxes. The other two bits sound nice. Also, when I was a tyke my Sunday School taught the story of Joseph. Keynesianism works.

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
Obama hasn’t advocated government-run healthcare, has he? Just health insurance regulation.
Frankly, there are good market-using solutions these guys didn’t take when they had power. Like subsidizing education of physicians & nurses so the supply would increase faster & catch demand; that’s using the market, but they didn’t do it. Nor did they lower the payroll tax & apply it to health benefits (which seems like a basic matter of fairness). Either they didn’t care or they never had the power. So are they paper tigers or a worse kind of fraud?

**(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;**Cap & trade is market-based energy reform. Grr.

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
Sadly, this will probably succeed. The petitions to amend Missouri’s constitution for this have been circulating. I knew this was a sneaky thing, but I wasn’t sure which side, so I admit I signed it. I’ll vote against it on the ballot.

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
Yeah, that’s backwards. Legalization is how you get rid of the “illegals” problem.

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
OK. First one of these I actually respect.

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
Sounds good, but I don’t trust them to know what’s actually effective.

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
:yawn:

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing
Yays! Free medical care for everyone! Pap smears for 6-year-olds I tell you what…

** and denial of health care and government funding of abortion**;
So much for the free market, though. And what about therapeutic abortion?

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
:rolleyes: This again.

[foolsguinea]

@adaher

The Republicans do need to jettison supply-side economics in favor of what actually worked for them. They need to reach back to Calvin Coolidge: reduce spending, then shower tax cuts on the public. This creates political momentum for even more spending cuts because people want more tax cuts.

Is the “public” rich persons who (used to) pay high income tax? A lot of people in this country are collecting negative income tax or otherwise on some measure of public subsidy.

[foolsguinea]

@adaher

That’s true in the Bush administration’s case, but some conservatives do want an effective government, they just want it to do core missions: law enforcement, national defense, and a few things that the private sector just cannot do, like education and a social safety net.

Unfortunately, the GOP coalition includes a fair number of persons who distrust safety nets.

I don’t think the Bush administration was incompetent because they hated government, I think they were incompetent because Bush’s team…was the most politicized White House ever.

Yeah.

@adaher

That’s pretty simple, although I’d say that with CW on the “government sucks” side, the burden of proof might be on your side.

When is CW right?

I actually hope a public option passes, because I’m going to enjoy watching political appointees compete with insurance company executives on a level playing field. That will be instructive on many levels. But until that happens, we can’t compare directly.

I also want to see this for the sake of social science.

All we have is extensive, and I mean really extensive, anecdotal evidence that the governments of the world are generally incompetent.

And absence of governmental power & authority is preferable to government of imperfect competence?

@adaher

Have Democrats run the government better? If you leave out Bill Clinton, I’d say no. Clinton is an outlier, a man who liberals never really had much use for and were quick to jettison his legacy in 2008, yet he’s the only reason the Democratic Party had any success before 2008, and if Obama doesn’t shape up, he’ll still be the only successful Democratic President most people ever lived to see.

:cough: Truman :cough: Also note that Eisenhower, Nixon, & even Reagan would be Democrats by today’s standards.

[Bribery is] not part of the basic philosophy of conservative governance. An honest conservative government won’t hand out bribes. An honest liberal government still needs to grease the wheels to get things done and satisfy all those competing constituencies. Conservatives are united by a philosophy. Liberals are united by interests. Those interests have to be massaged to keep the coalition together.

As a former Religious Right Republican, I find that the GOP are not so much united by philosophy as by a shared quality of having philosophies. Tax protesters are not social authoritarians are not hawks are not pro-business libertarians, except when they are. The interest groups that are getting consideration from Dems are getting a better deal than the libertarians & social conservatives that get nothing but the grim satisfaction of picking a “conservative” over a “liberal.”

So we’re going to find out who can better assess risk: experienced insurance company people, or political appointees? I know who my money would be on.

How about professional civil servants instead of political appointees?

the US is also more challenging to govern, in part because of our size and in part because of our culture. The administration of social programs is more politicized here than in Europe or Canada.

If this is so, it is due to state’s rights ideology, in the main. Yes, racism is a big deal here, but there’s ethnic tension in Europe too.

@Der_Trihs

Of course it is. Steal from whomever you can, hand it all over to yourself and your friends; that’s the conservative idea of proper money management. In and out of government.

For 1930’s German values of “far right” anyway. But yes, ruling classes do this (more subtly) all over the third world, & historically in some parts of the USA (which has sometimes been part of the Third World in political culture).

In general, though, I think Der Trihs tars the right with too broad a brush. There are more or less decent conservative citizens. I think they’re misguided to vote for the Gingrich-Limbaugh GOP, & apparently some are voting for conservative Blue Dogs or DLC Democrats now. If the GOP keep chasing purity, they may find they dwindle to a quarter of the electorate for a while.