Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Health Care

The Broad Right

I think you should check out this thread just for Art Deco's comments.  I agree that it makes no sense to look for real leadership on health care policy from the Republican congressional leadership.  But I also don't think that the failure to familiarize the public with free market-oriented health care policies is primarily a failure of Washington leadership. I think that leadership in the sense of explaining critiques of Obamacare and potential alternative market-driven policies will have to come, if it does come, from the broad center-right.  That means periodicals, talking heads who appear in the media, conservative talk show hosts and politicians outside the top Republican congressional leadership.  The model I'm thinking of is closer to the welfare reform debate from the mid-80s to 1994.  The burden of selling and implementing conservative policies was carried first by public intellectuals and academics (to include Charles Murray, Lawrence Mead, George Gilder, Robert Rector and others), backbench members of Congress, and Republican governors.  Those folks basically won the argument first over the then-existing welfare system's destructive effects and then developed reform approaches based on behavioral conditions and time limits (even if Gilder and Murray did not approve of this approach).  The Republican Presidents and top Republican congressional leaders of this era (like Bob Dole and Bob Michel) had little to do with shaping public opinion on this issue.  I remember reading that Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley had said it took x number (I don't remember the number but it was alot)  of editorials to get a policy suggestion enacted.  I think that the initial job of selling conservative approaches to health care will have to be a decentralized approach in which dozens and dozens of center-right elites make it a mission to explain health care to the public on many different platforms over of period of years.  The other approach would be to wait for some savior figure who can, through eloquence and determination, win the public over in a presidential campaign.  I don't think it is safe to assume that such a figure exists,  but even if there were such a figure, coservatives should still try to prepare the way and make his paths straight. 
Categories > Health Care

Discussions - 8 Comments

Agreed, agreed, agreed, which is why I'm basically *not* wasting my time supporting the GOP politically to any great extent. This battle will be won by converting the American populace by the ones and the twos, and is going to be a slog. But using Burke's little platoons is the way to go, and that is the center of gravity--the spirit of the people. Convert them, and all else will follow.

Having a GOP elected leadership able to use the bully pulpit of the campaign trail would be a boon--but they don't have what it takes. Perhaps future leadership will, but today's does not (with a few exceptions). If Mitchell's actions today are indicative, they will lag the "revolution", not lead it. Remember that when the time for honors comes (should it come).

Sorry ... I'm more pessimistic.

Progressivism truly is a like a cancer. After a century of relentless metastasizing, it has finally overtaken the body's ability to fight it off.

This will not be repealed. It will serve as the launching point for even more entrenchment of socialism.

Lambs to slaughter.

I was going to post this link and suggest that any sensible Republicans left might want to think about taking back their party from Glenn Beck and the Foxies so that we could start a sensible discussion, but Don's comment really seems to make it moot, doesn't it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html

It's just beyond imagining when a fairly conservative set of healthcare reforms - at least judged by the standards of any civilized nation - has just squeaked past and is now being met by insanity that bears no relationship to reality.

Good luck. I'm out of here.

Sick and tired, you will have to pardon me, but you wouldn't be, by any chance, a "concerned conservative", would you?

"Sick and tired" wrote: It's just beyond imagining when a fairly conservative set of healthcare reforms - at least judged by the standards of any civilized nation - has just squeaked past and is now being met by insanity that bears no relationship to reality.

I presume you mean the program enacted by Pelosi and company is considered "fairly conservative."

On the surface, perhaps.

But I'd bet my left testicle that within 10 years it'll be expanded beyond recognition.

I'd be willing to bet my life against yours that within 10 years we'll be seeing calls for even more taxation, even more expansion, and even more control over lifestyle choices.

Of course progressives such as yourself will simply blame Republicans and Bush for everything that goes wrong.

There is no sensible core to the progressive mindset. It is based on a fundamentally inconsistent set of logical principles.

I have no kids and I'm a millionaire to boot. So I'll just retreat and let the rest of the poor dumb bastards pay for this. They won't be able to, of course. The whole thing will collapse like Madoff's house of cards.

Good luck with all that. Welcome to your nirvana. You won. Now enjoy the decline.

I'd like to think that Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Eric Cantor will be able to do the heavy-lifting inside the Congress when it comes to leading the counter-revolution. Little platoons? Absolutely! But those three seem to possess the necessary intellect and political skills to effect salutary change as lawmakers. We're going to need everyone. Don: By all means "sit out" feeding the beast, but please don't "sit out" taming the beast.

It's just beyond imagining when a fairly conservative set of healthcare reforms - at least judged by the standards of any civilized nation - has just squeaked past and is now being met by insanity that bears no relationship to reality.

Hmmm.

1. Instituting a trillion dollar entitilement program while the country faces a crisis in public finance with scant precedent and then cooking the cost estimates is 'conservative...as judged by the standards of any civilized nation'.

2. The opponents of this course of action meet it with 'insanity that bears no relationship to reality'.

"center-right elites?" Who are these people, and what evidence is there that they don't want this bill to become law?
What has to happen is the people start to take back what they can control and that starts with the local sheriff. That office is slowly being federalized, but if the people of a community take it back then who enforces the law? The federal government can try to march troops into communities around the country but they do that and it only inspires more. Taking the country the back starts with the local executive not some federal elites. Although, I do wonder what would happen if some type of leader would emerge and declare open season on the federal government, I suspect a large portion of the population is simply waiting for that and once again I have a Captcha phrase that is way too appropriate: boozed prepared.....

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