coolstuff wrote:You know, the American people aren't as dumb as everyone thinks. We don't like it when one party controls the White House and Congress, or when one party throws its weight around in either arena. I predict that the Republicans will take control of Congress during Obama's presidency, Obama will be elected for one more term, then a Republican will be elected to the White House. Sometimes I think the whole thing is rigged to turn out that way....
The problem is entitlements, which persist regardless which party takes temporary control of the political system. Democrats are the party of entitlements. It has slowly but surely gotten worse over time, and now the hard left senses that it's in the endgame...because the double whammies of health care and climate change will place so much control of our lives in government hands, so much of the economy under government control, and make so many people permanently dependent on the government for the things that they cannot do without, that there will be no going back. It's like a politician trying to run against social security...it's a death sentence, because too many people depend upon it.
Whether the Republicans have adequately lived up to conservative principles (they haven't) is entirely beside the point. Contrary to popular opinion, the Republican party is not a conservative party. It is merely the necessary home of conservatives, who try to hold the line against their more liberal colleagues (like Bush) and the Democrats. I argue on behalf of conservatism, not on behalf of the Republican party.
The European social democracies are plagued with debt, endemic social problems, stagnant economies, and growing irrelevance. These are the same countries that used to rule the world. At one time the sun never set on the British empire...now it's just a small island nation with ever growing social and economic problems, cannibalizing on the remnants of its past prosperity and riding on the wake of American success. Whose wake will it ride on when the U.S. finally and fully adopts the same failed model that England did? Same goes for France and Germany.
You're right that there is a conservative ascendancy taking place in this country...one that might even boot Obama from office after just one term. The issue is what this president, and his socialist cronies, are able to irreversibly ram down our throats in the interim.
What Rand have you read?
