The Real Reason Conservatives are So Vehemently Opposed to the Candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger

www.allsouthwest.com ^ | Eric Dondero

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Well said, counselor.

There are many other issues as well.

Yes indeed there are. You'd honor me if you discussed another important libertarian/conservative frontier: tolerantly accepting God in the public arena. Are you game?

A somewhat well-spoken, self-professed libertarian (who has the earmarks of another type though) abandoned the reasoning part of our discussion at what he unwittingly reveals to be his discomfort level. It may be constructive to see if a catholic conservative (on what could be seen as a blasphemous concept) is better inclined to the detente I proposed at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/973882/posts?page=169#169 (and 170#170).

Pleasse tell me: yea or nay? I will then know to patiently await one of your thoughtful replies.

[Dog Gone]

Would you clarify this statement. Do you mean there's no spillover of division in the Republican party due to the Kalifornicate circus/recall?

Yes, I don't see anybody else around the country really getting too worked up over the California recall circus. It's a source of amusement even to the very politically aware anywhere else. It's certainly not dividing out-of-staters into McClintock/Schwarzenegger camps.

Not in any serious way, certainly.

[WOSG]

He had me convinced until he called David Stockman a libertarian ... oh fer cryin out loud, I read that Atlantic Monthly article in 1981 that got him in trouble and eventually canned, and David Stockman was a *LOOSE CANNON* that is why he was let go... he proved it later by being oh so against tax cuts, the Reagan tax cuts that helped the economy so much. Sorry you cant be pro-higher taxes and be a libertarian. His successor btw, Jim Miller is an awesome guy and more of a *real* small govt conservative.

As for the Ron Paul 1996 situation, the Congressional GOP got a Democrat to cross over, it was business, nothing personal. Fortunately the *people* of TX-14th CD did the right thing and dumped a phony republican for a real conservative/libertarian (Ron Paul).

On the key point - *IF* Arnold loves Hayek and really is a supply-side lower-tax small Govt libertarian, then he will be good for Cali. Alas, his only accomplishment

He runs, talks and sounds like a 'compassionate conservative'/moderate republican. He hits all the right sound bites on how Govt spends too much, but then spins around and says we need to do more for the children... I bet Karl Rove is eating it up, he's positioned smack dab in the middle of the votoers. Even that is a darn sight better than a Mech-ista, but nothing suggests he will be "better" than McClintock would be on any issue, in particular immigration. Arnold's real forte for any conservative at this point is electability - he, not Tom, has a chance to win.

[BlackElk]

Your #37 responds to my #31 which responds to your #27 to someone else. The question you posed at #27 was as to examples of how social liberalism costs taxpayers many dollars. My #31 said AIDS (certainly not a result of social conservatism but of the socially liberal fad of turning homosexual or other anal sex from the lust that dared not speak its name to the lust that simply will not shut up). Your #37 then gave a discourse as to how it was "unprotected anal sex" an the attendant viruses and bacteria, coupled with depressed immunity among drug abusers that causes AIDS and not HIV that causes AIDS. Where did I disagree? I never mentioned HIV.

I don't claim expertise in science or medicine and your theory sounds fine to me. Why is my example not a good one? Certainly taxpayers are paying the freight for most AIDS patients. Where do you disagree?

[BlackElk]

Don't kid yourself. division IS being played out elsewhere and those analogous to Arnold would geld the GOP.

[BlackElk]

In other states, there are other candidates representing the analogous positions to fight over.

[BlackElk]

Please remember that I am a functional computer illiterate. If you provide the link in accessible form to click on, I will probably respond. Certainly God belongs in the public square.

[SpyGuy]

In the long term, it is about the sure death of the Republican Party if social conservartives are marginalized and and rejected.

Whenever I run into a liberal, I'm asked why I like Bush. I say, "I don't. He's too liberal for me."

The Republican Party has been marching Leftward for a long time now. I'd say it's more Left than the Democratic Party of forty years ago. So perhaps it's time we true conservatives let it die and throw our collective support behind a new party with real conservative principles.

[FastCoyote]

"Absolutely! This is the core message I always find effective in dealing with extreme Liberal-tarians. All that "free sex" and "free dope" they want has costly ramifications for taxpayers."

---

No it doesn't. The financial ramification is from big government Republicans like Bush who are happy as clams to keep the welfare bailouts coming. libertarians would legalize drugs and sex, but they would also cut off the money spigot to drug addicts, the WOD, AIDs "victims", and they'd enforce property laws. So, the net cost to society would be far less than our current policies. Please explain how we already have free sex, cheap dope and abortions in a Republican Administration with a Republican Congress and Republican Senate and most State governors Republican, and you guys still can't see the handwriting on the wall.

[FastCoyote]

"Social liberalism teaches that drug use is no one's business and drug addiction is no one's fault. "

That is social liberalism, but not libertarianism. libertarians believe if you are a drug addict, it is your own damn fault. Because you can't understand this subtle but huge difference, it is neveer worth debating you.

[FastCoyote]

"So perhaps it's time we true conservatives let it die and throw our collective support behind a new party with real conservative principles."

Perhaps you could call it the "Losers Club" and you could hold your meetings in a tee House. Some of us tried our own version of thi scheme, it's called the Libertarian Party.

[GatekeeperBookman]

Mistaken libertarian drivel.

If it feels good, anyone who wishes to engage, should do it. Welcome sign at entrance of road to warm place.

[GatekeeperBookman]

The Great society-we still bleed & even Bush has re-opened the wounds. FDR's New Deal. Bush's phony compassion.

It's very hard to be civil to someone like you-our gov comes with a vengence to extract our property to throw it away on the pigs who feed from the trough-and you ask for details? Oh, do please, go away.

[InterceptPoint]

The Great society-we still bleed & even Bush has re-opened the wounds. FDR's New Deal. Bush's phony compassion. It's very hard to be civil to someone like you-our gov comes with a vengence to extract our property to throw it away on the pigs who feed from the trough-and you ask for details? Oh, do please, go away.

I agree with you. What did I say that is so objectionable?

[Kenny Bunk]

That MIGHT not be true. If those in charge are fiscally conservative, those who have reason, might change certrain aspects of their lifestyles if they knew very well that THEY would be FISCALLY responsible for the consequences.

Bastardy among certain elements of the population springs immediately to mind. Certainly, if were not a method for single young moms to become financially independent by collecting benefits and ADC payments, it might become less popular.

[InterceptPoint]

Certainly taxpayers are paying the freight for most AIDS patients. Where do you disagree?

I agree that we are paying the freight. The problem I have with the example is that the premise for the payment is false. The Government is paying for medication that doesn't work and that they know doesn't work because the politics of the situation (don't get the gay communitity and their supporting major media mad at you) requires it. The Government is not doing anything and we are not paying for anything that actually helps people with AIDS.

Consider the "social costs" of my solution which is to do nothing. People with AIDS would die and they would keep on dying until the gays and drug users finally figured out what was killing them. Right now they are told and I think convinced that it is a virus and not their drug habits that are doing the trick. This gives them carte blanche to keep right on taking the drugs that are killing them.

[Kenny Bunk]

Absolutely fascinating that Ahnolt is from Austria, perhaps the best run country in Europe in many ways. For example they have universal health care, but it's insurance, and it's paid for by individuals and the businesses that employ them.

They have taken an extremely pragmatic way out of large scale social spending. However, it is (or was) not a very diverse society, and is well disciplined and educated.

Drop a few hundred thousand of our urban clymers or other low-end Democrats, into it and the country would never be heard from again ... sort of what is happening in Sweden with it's open door immigration from various hellholes.

[Heartbreak of Psoriasis]

Being a fiscal conservative and a social liberal is impossible. Why?? Because socially liberal values cost the taxpayer many many dollars in terms of dealing with its results. Excellent point.

More broadly, the problem with libertarianism is that it fails to see that a free market economy and civil society can thrive only when the great mass of the population are disciplined by faith in transcendent values.

Only a deeply religious (and I dare say Christian) people could have created the United States.

Is it not clear that as our society has become less Christian it has become more socialistic? It's obvious why that happens: when society is religious, it is strong, and it doesn't need an enormous state machine to keep the peace, ensure that the elderly are cared for, prevent child abuse, educate children. When society loses its faith, it weakens (soaring divorce rates, increased child abuse, failing education of the young, rampant STD's) and the state must step in to prop the whole thing up.

In short, "family values" are the very thing that allow "laissez faire" economics to function. You can't have one without the other, at least over the long haul. Of course, that's really the problem - we have as a people no real historical sense, and can't imagine a "long haul" much past the next NFL season.

A Christian America is a free America, and conversely a pagan America is a tech-savvy pagan Roman Empire.

We're still living on the moral capital of the previous Christian generations, but we've drawn down that account, and little remains, in my estimation. This has actually done a disservice to us in a way, because it's prevented us from making the connection between economic freedom and public morality.

[snooker]

The real reason is conservatives have a 3 year lease on the CA phone booth they meet in.

Nothing happens overnite, you want to meet in a real room, incrementalism is your friend.

[GatekeeperBookman]

With my apologies-I must not have understood your intention. Was it sarcasm? You said, "For example???", as though you did not accept the poster's observation that an absence of ( moral ) principle makes for bad public policy.