In truth, the Democrats would never have got the recent health care reform legislation passed had they pandered exclusively to the far left wing of the party.

Let's be honest here. Indeed, Americans have watched BOTH of its two political parties go to extremes.

By the time that the elections roll around in November, the party that appeals to the centrists will be the party that will be more successful.

The Democrats won the last election by doing just that very thing. When all is said and done, extremist views, as espoused by this website and its liberal counterparts, are not a reflection of the majority of Americans.

Krugman no more represents a majority of Democrats with his extremist views than CY represents a majority of Republicans with his extremist views.

liberalism seems to involve a mental disorder in which self doubt and remorse for one's actions are non existent.All the hate the Krugmans of the world had for Bush, a noble man who is proving to be right in his cause, poured like pus from untreated wounds into their diatribes against him, and the right wing of the Republican party. To see where this led, take a look a the Zombie web site and her documentation of the results. Krugman is committed to this philosophy of lies for the "greater good", like his master in the White House.

One party has indeed moved, here's Romney then on what he now calls Unconstitutional Socialism blah blah:

http://www.MYtube.com/watch?v=y6DrH6P9OC0

(site won't allow links to youtube so swap a you for the MY)

Yep, the front runner for the 2012 Rep nomination called the individual mandate "the ultimate conservative plan", over and over two years ago.

Heck Geo Washington mandated that every adult male buy a gun. The militia act, look it up. Who knew George was a Fascist Communist Maoist American hater who took away our freedom.

A small segment of the right has gone nuts, and the the LEADERS of the right have been fanning the flames all year over what was good enough for Geo in the 1790s and good enough for Milt in 2008.

Mitt Romney a conservative? That's some funny stuff.

Thanks for making my point better than I did pistolero.

Thanks for making my point better than I did pistolero.
Posted by Jim at March 26, 2010 12:17 PM

You don't have a point. Forcing people to buy things is not a conservative action. It doesn't matter if Republicans or Democrats or George Washington is the one doing it.

You seem to be having a problem with vocabulary. Republican, small "r" republican, libertarian, and conservative are not synonyms. These people ally themselves against socialism and the social democratic party currently in power, but they are not the same thing. Medicare Part D was not a conservative effort, it was a Republican effort to buy votes from seniors. Not conservative.

Me and mine will deal with the GOP after we bury the Dems. The kid pissing on my porch can wait until after I've horsewhipped the hooligan setting fire to my garage.

You had a point? Sorry, but I don't think politicians who support things like gun bans and government-mandated insurance are conservative. And I don't think I am speaking for just the fringe, either.

OK Britt,

George Washington was too liberal for you, I'm very happy to have him on my side, and Jefferson who's now to liberal for Texas textbooks, and John Adams who represented the British solders accused of the Boston Massacre, Hamilton with his national bank etc. I'll gladly take all the Founders and the more perfect union they created with a strong central government that was charged with providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare.

You can have whatever conservatives you choose.

Pistolero,

You are more than free to think Romney is too liberal. My point is he was a front runner for the GOP nomination. If he's too liberal for you, and he was in the top 2 or 3 candidates of the more conservative major party, then yeah, you are on the fringe. But keep the faith, the GOP is moving your way (as in away from the center).

Posted by Jim at March 26, 2010 11:58 AM

Conscription, dumbass, is completely different than a general mandate to purchase insurance. Support for the unorganized militia and it's purpose for defense is written into the Constitution. Healthcare as a right...not so much. Idiot.

That you would pathetically attempt to conflate the two just shows the intellectual poverty of the left--yet again.

more conservative major party

Uh-huh, and these days that's more perception than reality. I don't know what Dick Armey's thinking now, but he was leaning in the same direction right after the last election:
"oo often the policy agenda was determined by short-sighted political considerations and an abiding fear that the public simply would not understand limited government and expanded individual freedoms. How else do we explain "compassionate conservatism," No Child Left Behind, the Medicare drug benefit and the most dramatic growth in federal spending since LBJ's Great Society?"

Who can forget those chilling signs at left wing protests saying "We Liberals came unarmed (this time)" and "Warning: if Jerry Brown can't stop it, a Browning can"?

It's not for nothing that "gun nut" & "gun-lover" are practically synonymous with Hippie & Liberal. Scratch a Hippie, find a marksman, isn't that the saying?

I don't find either party representative of the base American. Both are liberal in their own way. The Democrats want to control every aspect of my life as they think they can do it better and they have an agenda such as the environment that they feel is absolutely necessary to protect, even though their efforts in the past have caused more problems. The Republicans, they want to tell me what to do for moral reasons. The only problem is that I don't agree with their morals. From my perspective, and shared by many down here, Bush was a liberal; Obama is a person from another planet.

The situation as it now exist, after passage of this bill, is that we are essentially at war with our government. Yes, I know the liberals who are commentting will have a good time with that, but then your opinion matters very little; debate is over. Those like myself need only about 30% of the population. That is the magic number that seems to get a movement going. I think that we can come up with that number with little difficulty. The problem is leadership. So far no one has come the the front to express these views. And the views are not radical. Basically they consist of getting the government to leave us alone. The Feds need to get back to their original purpose, making wars and minimal regualtion.

The time will likely come as people are moved.

Iconoclast,

The Militia Act of 1792 required all white males 18-45 to buy their equipment. It mandated what specific equipment they were required by Federal law to buy. The reason for the mandate doesn't change the underlying Constitutional principle that the government, according to the Founders, can indeed require the citizens of all the states to buy something. The Founders, not some Maoist, Fascist, Freedom takers.

Pistolero,

I get it! The GOP since 2000 (or earlier?) is too liberal for YOU. You, and a fringe element, have moved to the right, and the GOP leadership has started pandering to you by also moving right with their rhetoric. That is my point, and a direct contradiction of what CY was saying with his post. Read the last sentence and get back to me

Romney isn't a conservative, that's why he was elected governor, he is pro gay marriage and pro health-care, until he swung far right 4 years ago when he decided to run for president. Romney is a flip flopper, which is why he lost the nomination and will lose the nomination in 2012

You, and a fringe element, have moved to the right

Moved? How do you know we haven't always been here? And I can promise you that if the GOP really gave a damn about us eeevil right wing extremists, Mitt Romney with his record as MA governor wouldn't be taken any more seriously as a candidate than, say, Howard Dean.

You're completely right, I shouldn't have said you'd moved anywhere. I believe you when you say you were always there. What I meant to say (2nd half of my post) was that the leadership of the GOP is talking as though they are moving towards you. Hence their newly heated rhetoric raging against the evils they, until recently, publicly supported.

November is going to be sweet.

The reason for the mandate doesn't change the underlying Constitutional principle that the government, according to the Founders, can indeed require the citizens of all the states to buy something. The Founders, not some Maoist, Fascist, Freedom takers.

If you're the Founders, you want the people to be armed, the better to oppose the government.

If you're a Fascist you want the disarmed people to be compelled at gunpoint to purchase healthcare from the business interests who pour money into the Fascist Party's coffers.

And if you're a Fascist you pretend not to see any difference between the two things.

Nice dodge. Like I said, either mandates are constitutional or they aren't, being "good" or "bad" mandates make no difference in terms of their legality. Was Washington being unconstitutional and talking people's freedom or not. Pick one and then apply the same conclusion to Obama. I know it sucks to have to be consistent but life isn't fair.

As of the rest, no one is trying to take your guns, someone is trying to make sure everyone pays for the health care they will inevitably need. Personal responsibility -- oooh, so scary!

P.S. Hitler wasn't a liberal. Also up is still not down. I know, I know, you read (excerpts) of Goldberg's book, now read something on the same topic written by a professional historian.

"But Krugman isn't talking about economics, which is good, considering how little he actually knows about the subject..."

30 books including a leading textbook, scads of papers pointed at by thousands of citations, professorship at Princeton, Nobel prize... someone's wearing his clever trousers today!

"30 books including a leading textbook, scads of papers pointed at by thousands of citations, professorship at Princeton, Nobel prize... someone's wearing his clever trousers today!"

Wow. You really do think the Nobel Prize, professorships, (and the presidency, for that matter). are awarded based on merit, as opposed to "right" [liberal] thinking, skin color, and so on. The hive-mind and stupidity emanating from Princeton at times is amazing - circa 2003 I recall academics who expressed sympathy for doctrinaire Communism. Not exactly the recipe for sound fiscal policy.

For crying out loud, the oval office is occupied by a Kenyan nonentity who Affirmative Actioned and guilt-tripped his way to success.

In short, I'm happy you feel safe b/c of deluded little men with impressive "credentials". For your own sake Krugman and Teleprompter Boy had better hope their Keynesian/statist philosophies don't fail yet again.

As of the rest, no one is trying to take your guns, someone is trying to make sure everyone pays for the health care they will inevitably need. Personal responsibility -- oooh, so scary!

Then why are there subsidies for lower income people?

George Washington was too liberal for you, I'm very happy to have him on my side, and Jefferson who's now to liberal for Texas textbooks, and John Adams who represented the British solders accused of the Boston Massacre, Hamilton with his national bank etc. I'll gladly take all the Founders and the more perfect union they created with a strong central government that was charged with providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare.

You can have whatever conservatives you choose.

________

HAHAHAHAH

Jim, you ignorant slut. So Tom "The government is best which governs least" Jefferson is now on your side? You dream, dickhead, you dream.

Hamilton was a statist prick, he'd be a 'crat today. I think Ben Franklin would too just on skeevy, "I have the clap and so I need to join the party that's cool with the clap" grounds. Every other Founding Father would be an extreme right winger today. If I resurrected Washington, he'd be raising an army right now. Something for ya'll to think about.

_____

As of the rest, no one is trying to take your guns, someone is trying to make sure everyone pays for the health care they will inevitably need. Personal responsibility -- oooh, so scary!

____

Forced personal responsibility is not personal responsibility. More importantly, the people who don't have health insurance choose not to purchase it. So clearly you should steal other people's money to give it to them. Just don't call redistribution of wealth socialist.

_______

P.S. Hitler wasn't a liberal. Also up is still not down. I know, I know, you read (excerpts) of Goldberg's book, now read something on the same topic written by a professional historian.
________

He wasn't a liberal, he was fascist. Fascism is a bastardized form of socialism, a heresy of Marxism. The National Socialist German Workers Party was a socialist party. Right there in the name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program

Some choice bits:

# Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
# In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
# We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
# We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
# We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
# We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

I mean, if that's a right wing economic program, then I'm a lefty.