Really?
Posted on 09/28/2010 9:54:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Matt Yglesias explains his recent shift toward liberaltarianism:
It was suggested to me by a number of parties this week that I should give some explicit account of why the blog has turned in what you might call a more “neoliberal” (though I don’t really like the term) direction of late. There’s a couple of reasons. One is simply product differentiation—I don’t think just writing the same posts as Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein and Jon Chait is what the world needs from me, but we obviously all have similar political opinions. The other is the point I’ve made before, namely that with the passage of the Affordable Care Act the long struggle to expand the scope of the welfare state is largely over.
Last spring Jonah Goldberg observed that if the Democrats passed health care reform:
1) They would suffer negative consequences in the fall elections and in the short term Republicans would benefit.
2) In the long term the Democrats would have won policy-wise because they would set the tone of the discussion from that point on, as the question would the nature of the new expansion to the welfare state, not its existence.
Let’s grant that the Republican victories have some relationship to Democratic policy overreach. If you could eliminate many of the policy changes enacted in the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, at the cost of indefinite Democratic control of Congress, would you? If you are a person of the Right I assume you’d accede to this. After all, in theory the ends of a political ideology are to shape the nature of the political economy, not win elections, which are just means.
But the fixation on polls, calculations of the margin of Republican victory, as well as the Democratic panic and ennui, seem to neglect these facts. After the likely losses in the fall the pundits will talk about what Obama needs to do to win back the nation, etc. But the fact is that he’s already changed the nation, by shifting health care policy in a direction broadly consonant with liberal Democratic values. That’s really what matters, and what will echo down through the generations. The Democratic victories of 2006 will be forgotten very soon, and to some extent those of 2008 will be too. But the policies enacted by the Congress of 2008 will impact us in our day to day lives for generations. They already are.
I don’t begrudge the Republicans their exultation after their likely victory in November. But this isn’t professional sports, it’s more than just a game, and it’s even more than just an avenue for professional advancement and self-glorification. Winning isn’t everything; it’s just a vanity which appeals to our baser animal instincts.
Besides, any move to repeal this atrocity would be met with ads like "See? The evil GOP is trying to kill you!" and they will predictably fall like a house of cards.
Of course it was they’re real goal. That’s why they did whatever it took, arm-twisting, payoffs, deem and pass, reconciliation. Anything to get the mechanisms enacted into law.
The answer is to completely defund it. Starve it. Then repeal it. Then burn it.
I think that might be correct.
Either the government backs off and does things right, or the citizens initiate war.
Depends on the timing ... Obamacare has a long way to go before it is implemented. Remember, it is the costs, not the benefits, that are front-loaded. That’s the window through which repeal can climb.
He is assuming that none of zer0’s policies will be rolled back or repealed - or at least parts of them.
What he doesn’t realize that November isn’t just about a short term victory, but the first step in restoring this nation - unless, of course, that feeling dies off.
We (The Tea Party, Conservatives etc.) need to get a GOP dominated Congress and a conservative in the White House in 2012, and demand that they abolish Obamacare. And we need to impress upon them that if they don’t do this, then we’ll boot THEIR asses out of Washington and get someone who will.
Really?
And Wittgenstein was beery swine who just as sloshed as Schlegel.
“...I just don’t see them doing this.”
.
Are we exchanging one group of RINOs with another?
I have not read the bill, but I have heard enough talk radio to deduce the bill was the end run around the Constitution, Congress, the legislative process and America.
The zerocare bill must die .. quickly and completely.
There are no parts worth salvageing.
A poet once said
“Always hopeful, yet discontent, He knows changes aren’t permanent, But change is”,
Nothing is permanent - Reidcare isn’t (it should not even be called 0bamaCare because he had little to do in writing it).
[If he’s right we’re sunk]
Oh, he’s right and we are sunk. And you better hope we are going down like the Titanic, because that’s the only way to fix the problem.
We cannot physically pay for Obamacare. Period. And Republicans have no hope of turning that supertanker around in time before it hits the rocks. But neither can Obamacare be salvaged when it does hit the rocks. It is only out of the ensuing carnage that we have a chance of cutting out the deadwood. Will take 20 years.
If anyone thinks that if we get a pub majority in the house and senate our work is done, think again. Without intense pressure the pubs will slack, reach across the isle, comprimise, and allow obamacare to stick. WE CANNOT ALLOW THAT! The Tea Party must continue its pressure unabated, maybe even more pressure than ever.
Even with the wind at their back i.e. public dissapproval of Obamacare, pubs will be hesitant to really go after defunding and especially repeal, its not in their nature to be that aggressive, but they will if we keep our boots to their neck. They will take the path of least resistance and we need to make sure that path is repealing obamacare and burning it to a crisp.
So secession it is going to be then. Will a war follow?
If Obama and the lamestreammedia have problems with the TEA Party right now, just wait until ObamaCare is fully enacted.
I will wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to have a shot at rolling the Obamacare monster back. Right now, that may be our best hope, rather than waiting for the Republicans to legislate it back.
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