Argue with me people! With civility of course, but argue. Exchange ideas. Inform me. I want to get this. I’m not a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon so I need your help.
Dorothy Rabinowitz opines in the WSJ (The Republican Who Can Win) that the 2012 Republican candidate will require a passion for ideas other than cost-cutting or smaller government. For me these ideas are not just popular issues to be addressed dismissively but are the root of many of our problems today (jobs, housing, economy). Big Brother Government has promised too much to too many and can actually deliver too little of it. Since when did Moses or the Founding Fathers decree that “Ye shall have entitlements, an overabundance of them, and they shall go forth and multiply until Ye no longer must care for yourself”.
At first D.R. (Dorothy) seems like a conservative. This is the Wall Street Journal after all. “Americans already have plenty of cause for fear. They have on one side the Obama health-care plan now nearly universally acknowledged as a disaster.”
A few heartbeats later she is the liberal socialist. DR: “The Republican who wants to win would avoid talk of the costs that our spendthrift ways, particularly benefits like Social Security, are supposedly heaping on future generations. He would especially avoid painting images of the pain Americans feel at burdening their children and grandchildren. This high-minded talk, rooted in fantasy, isn’t going to warm the hearts of voters of mature age—and they are legion—who feel no such pain.”
Rooted in fantasy? Puh-leeeze! Yes, Social Security and Medicare are the twin 800-pound gorillas in the room. Does she, or you, think if everyone ignores them maybe they’ll go away. Or someone can take care of them tomorrow, long after we’re gone.
She does have a point about “voters of mature age”. Despite any fear-mongering, the problems and solutions will not effect them. Just please don’t screw the rest of us who must deal with it by voting for more of the same.
DR: “The Republican who wins will have to know, and show that he knows, that most Americans aren’t sitting around worried to death about big government—they’re worried about jobs and what they have in savings.”
THIS American is worried (not to death however) that big government is throttling jobs and savings. (Just check the latest jobs report.) And what about that unemployment? I seriously feel for anyone who is ever out of a job when they don’t want to be, but over 90% of the work force still has a job. Why is high employment, though undesirable to be sure, the harbinger of impending doom? ‘Esplain this to me people.
She does make pertinent points about Obama’s disastrous foreign policy, or lack thereof:
“Not till President Obama delivered his speech relegating Israel to pre-1967 borders did outraged Republicans come to roaring life—as Democrats, too, largely did—about a foreign policy issue.”
“Fast forward to September 2009, when the Obama administration virtually overnight cancelled the planned missile defense system that was to be established in Poland and the Czech Republic—a shock to both allies but a gift to the Russians.”
“In March 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let it be known that the United States no longer supported the British in the matter of the Falkland Islands, which have been British territory since 1833, and that “negotiations” with Argentina were in order.”
She concludes with a short ramble about being American, and “That something lies in the hearts of Americans across the land and it is those hearts to which the candidate will have to speak.” I concur.
Your thoughts?
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Related articles
- Dorothy Rabinowitz: The Republican Who Can Win (online.wsj.com)
- Medicare Threatens Debt-Ceiling, Budget Negotiations as Dems, GOP Dig In (abcnews.go.com)
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