My Liberal Friends and Acquaintances,
Well, it is beginning to look as if you are going to get your way. Under intense pressure from party leadership and organized labor, the last Democrat holdouts are about to buckle under and vote yes on the largest expansion of the Federal Government since the “New Deal”. I can’t say that I blame them. Faced with a virtually guaranteed no win situation, I guess I would probably go ahead and vote the way I really wanted to all along and hope for the best. A “yes” vote only likely means getting voted out of office while a “no” vote means definitely losing party support and millions of dollars in contributions form Big Labor. Pretty easy decision when you think about it.
At least this entire fiasco has made the voting public more aware of what their elected representatives are and are not capable of. We have seen that the vast majority are incapable of simply voting their conscience. And by conscience, I mean listening to the people that elected them and actually representing their best interests. We have seen people that we trusted to make informed decisions vote on massive pieces of legislation that they could not possibly have had time to read and fully comprehend. Even if you allow for a large staff reading the bill and thoroughly briefing said elected official, several votes occurred too fast for even that to happen. Perhaps most importantly we have learned that parliamentary process is no more than what the party in control wants it to be. There are no standards, only rules that can be twisted and changed to best suit whichever party has the power to make those rules. This goes for Republicans and Democrats alike.
Before this issue was thrust upon us, the lines drawn between you and me were much less clear. We have all been forced to view this spectacle through polarizing lenses shaded in the colors of Republican and Democrat. I have always considered myself to be a fiscally conservative, constitutional Republican. That definition allowed me the freedom to occasionally step into that not-so-clear zone between you and me and sometimes even meet you there for a cup of coffee and a nice chat. That just isn’t so easy anymore. It seems now that anytime I decide to venture into that fuzzy intersection on ideas, I have to go farther over to your side to get you to talk. I just can’t do that anymore.
So, as we all sit here on the edge of history waiting for the American political landscape to change forever, I have one thing to ask of you. When you begin to chafe under a 50-60% tax burden, when you can’t get that new cancer drug because it’s just too expensive, or you finally realize that maybe the government has gotten a little too big, don’t let me hear you complain. You can gripe and bitch all you want, I just don’t want to hear it. If you can do that for me, then I promise I will never say “I told you so”.
Please don’t take this to mean that our friendship is over my liberal brothers and sisters. We can still be part of each others lives. I am sure we will find new things to discuss, new ideas to argue about and maybe we will even solve a few problems along the way. And we will have many problems to solve. Even if this current piece of government expansion fails, there will be other attempts. We still have to come together in the never never land between our ideals and decide how our children will ever be able to repay the massive debt we have already bestowed upon them. Our Grandparents are already remembered in the history books as “The Greatest Generation”. I wonder how history will view our generation.
Your Conservative Friend,
Rich
5 Comments
Do you think this is just a bit melodramatic? We can look back at the last 30 or more years in government and see the same trend of continuous growth and over step, and most of that time (20 years or 3 of the last 5 administrations) were helmed by supposed conservatives. If you could honestly point to a single administration since Reagan that hasn’t continued this trend and stuck to the conservative principles you claim, then I will join you in this. I am not a Liberal, for the most part I fall in that void between and I choose based upon the best candidate (or the one likely to do the least damage) and I am continually frustrated by each side attacking the other and neither is willing to do an honest assessment of their own policies, practices and behaviors.
Representatives on both sides of the aisle have misread this and we are going to get a bill that most likely will do more harm than good, and you can not sit back and tell me that the liberals are the only ones responsible for that. We have spent the last year watching some of the ugliest partisan bickering.
When one side can grossly misrepresent language in a bill for the sole purpose of scaring the public, we no longer have representatives I want to have in office. This is individuals putting party power over the welfare of the country and their constituents and they are no longer ‘public’ servants.
The sad thing is that most of your arguments against this bill fall into the category of those made when Medicare was originally being proposed and none of the ‘Doom and Gloom’ stories have proven true. Until you can honestly say you have cleaned up your side of the street, it is wrong for you to point at the left and place the blame there. Reagan increased government and drove us into deficit spending like no other President in history, at the time. Our debt increased by leaps and bounds and the only President who has made strides since was a centrist Democrat.
Your Centrist Friend,
Chris
Chris,
First, it was meant to be melodramatic and merely a representation of what I feel is going on in this country right now. As usual your views are centrist in nature while I see things a little differently. We are both right in many instances and both wrong in a few.
You are correct, I can’t point to a single administration in the last 30 years that has manged to shrink the Federal Government or even manage to contain its growth. I believe I made it rather clear that both Republicans and Democrats are to blame in this one. My comments about polarization were geared more towards the population overall and not those in Congress.
You state that this bill is going to do more harm than good and then imply that partisan bickering has been a cause of that. Really? What would have had the Republicans in Congress do? It seems that you think they should have just sat back and let the majority rule. The result of that would have been a fusion of what we now see in the House and Senate bills. There wasn’t any bickering nearly so much as there was Democrat strong-arm politics. The Democrat leadership has wanted for years to get Universal Health Care and once they had the majority in both the House and Congress, they were going to stop at nothing to get it.
The party leadership knows that they are very likely going to lose that majority come election time this year. No matter which way the vote goes, they are out. Liberal Democrats are a minority in this country and in most districts need independents to side with them to win seats. Polls show that most independents are now leaning right, which most likely will result in many seats going to the Republicans.
Once this bill passes and that giant Government Health Care Machine is built, it will be nearly impossible to turn it off. Republicans claim that they will repeal the legislation this fall when they win back enough seats to do so, but I doubt it. I believe that they intend to do so now, but when it comes down to it there will have been too many new Federal jobs created and we will be stuck with it.
One last thing. Clinton was not and is not a Centrist. I agree he is not nearly as far left as the current President, but he only came over to the center because he wanted to get re-elected and was faced with a Congress that did not agree with his leftist views. He started left and only came to the center after his party lost the House.
And we are cleaning up our side of the street. I think you will see almost as many Republican incumbents get tossed out this fall as Democrats. Unfortunately that just means a whole new batch of overpaid lobbyists in DC as those out of work politicians get hired on by the unions and big businesses. Yet another battle to fight later.
Man, I need to get back on here.
We can’t afford it. Period. What else needs to be said? Where’s the politicians who will stand up and say (irregardless of ideology,) “We can’t afford this right now.”
Matt,
I agree completely. The thing is, there are things we can do right now that are entirely affordable, practically free even! But those fixes would not create any new gov jobs, or transfer any wealth so the current power base has no interest in them. If you look at this from a purely apolitical, business point of view the solution is fairly simple. But that won’t happen either since very few of our elected officials have any concept of how to efficiently run anything.
Ok, first, the petty bickering did help get this bill in a position to pass. The Republicans began their all out war against the proposed measures before there was anything in writing proposed. To not be invited to the table is a ridiculous charge, they should have insisted on it in very obvious and vocal terms. But of course the party leadership had already decided to make this the make-it-or-break-it policy for Obama and that became obvious as the first draft of the House bill was produced. Instead of arguing legitimate disagreement points within the bill they distorted and misinterpreted the language as much as possible and launched entire campaigns against ‘Death Panels’ etc. They was never any interest on the right to participate in this, and any suggestion otherwise is dishonest.
And yes, Clinton was a centrist, even in his early campaign speeches while running for his first term, he had a centrist tone.
Matt, not to be too picky, but there is no such word as irregardless, its either regarding (which is what irregardless means) or regardless (which is what I think you meant to say.) Sorry, I couldn’t help it, its the OCD in me that requires the correction. I couldn’t just let it go.
And as far as ‘couldn’t afford it’ the same could have been said for Social Security and Medicare and fighting two wars.
If they are going to take my money for entitlements then:
1. they should protect the entitlement funds from Congressional pilfering. Payouts should only go to those using the entitlements as they were intended, the rest should be reserved in an interest bearing account leaving an additional fund for growth and changing conditions of the population. No more treating it as a Congressional slush fund.
2. give every citizen the right to ‘opt out’. If you choose to not pay in, you get no payout.
I think this would fix a lot of the issues with these entitlements, but that is just me. This would reduce the entitlement base, but would also make people feel better about paying into them, knowing that the money will actually be there when they need it.
Chris
Post a Comment