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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (16316)	4/7/2010 3:27:47 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Have you been to a tea party ????? scary people ??? liberals must really fear their power to continue to make up these lies. Go to one, it's doctors, nurses, small business people, retiries. The DC cops say that are the nicest protesters they have ever had to deal with. Not only do they pick up their own trash,but also the trash that was there before they came, said a police captain. you want to see scary people, go to ANY liberal protest. Bring your looting clothes and gas mask

To: Lane3 who wrote (16316)	4/7/2010 3:40:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

How do you define moderate? Are you focusing that word on people manner (antics, over the top statements, etc.) or their positions? You're right that if that alienates the core conservatives, that might not produce a net gain. My point is that the purists have to make the choice between being relatively pure or being in power. Can't have both. They can't be extremely "pure" and have power, but being more "pure" (while perhaps toning down some of the antics) might increase their power. I think one of the main reasons Republicans got such a drubbing in elections leading up to (and including) the last presidential and congressional election, was because they had become so "unpure". They moved away from their principles and didn't give anyone any reason to vote for them except the thought that its possible the Democrats might be worse. That's particuarly true on the principle of constraining the growth of government. If Republicans are a statist party, they lose the libertarian leaning Republicans and the constitutional purists, while the statist still have more reason to feel confident that the Dems will support their agenda. Or they can work constructively on an agenda that will grab a majority, however distasteful elements of it might be. That assumes that getting a majority is constructive. The reason to have a majority is to have power, the reason to have power should be to achieve some objective. If you gain a majority by harming your objective, the majority is destructive not constructive. And working that way is itself a questionable strategy for gaining a majority, your more likely to lose support than gain it IMO, so you will have neither a majority nor progress towards your goals. Now that's hardly a universal thing. There are cases where abandoning principles leads to more support, but politicians in both parties already frequently do that, and I would call acting unprincipled in order to get a narrow partisan advantage to be something constructive. So I might be with you on the antics (although I think you might exaggerate their extent and their net impact a bit, and there are an equal opportunity thing in terms of being common from both political parties, from many political groups, and from all sorts of media sources, not so much a "Tea Party/Fox/talk radio" thing); and I might be with you on some specific compromises on issues of principle and political aims, but not so much with the general idea that the Republican parties problem is it won't compromise its ideals enough for power. I think the reality is closer to the opposite.