{"id":4504,"date":"2009-04-06T07:10:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T12:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4504"},"modified":"2009-11-20T15:35:11","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T20:35:11","slug":"what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-mngop-part-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4504","title":{"rendered":"What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part VI"},"content":{"rendered":"

So the mission is this: dispense with the careerism and backbiting and just-plain-doesn’t-matter<\/em> buncombe that occupies so much of the MNGOP’s time, and come up with a message – a message that’ll not only unite the party, but reach out to people who aren’t especially affiliated with either party to begin with.\u00a0 A message that will clearly frame the fact that there is a very clear choice between Republicans and Democrats.<\/p>\n

Here’s the hard part; they have to be messages that even Republicans agree on amongst themselves.\u00a0 And that’s a tough one; leaving aside the single-issue voters who might be completely ignorant about issues outside their turf (I can’t count the number of single-issue pro-lifers who’ve claimed to oppose, say, concealed-carry reform, just because they had never cared to learn about the issue beyond what the media told them), a lot of the messages that are absolutely vital <\/em>to one group of Republicans can be anathema – or at least not very important – to others.<\/p>\n

Good example?\u00a0 Gay marriage.\u00a0 It’s an issue worth taking up arms over to some Republicans; to the GOP’s tiny gay minority, it’s a goal; to a lot of us (the “Mitch Berg Bloc”, let’s call us), it’s various degrees\u00a0of “important, but not the most important issue out there.\u00a0 In any case, it’s an stance that serves more to ensure ideological purity within a movement than to win elections.<\/p>\n

The goal here, once again: find messages all Republicans can agree on, and that can win people over to the party<\/em>.\u00a0 The idea is this; when we’re back in power, we can fuss about all the issues that divide us; if we’re out of power, we lose on all <\/em>the issues, no matter what; the Democrats will gut-shoot every <\/em>liberty that matters while they’re in power.<\/p>\n

Last week<\/a>, I suggested three of those messages:<\/p>\n

Prosperity.<\/p>\n

Education.<\/p>\n

Security.<\/p>\n

These are all make-or-break issues on the state <\/em>level (these are not intended for the national party, although two out of three should be), both for unting the party and winning over voters.<\/p>\n

We’re going to go over one of them per day.\u00a0 We’ll start with prosperity.<\/p>\n

America has a hard time not <\/em>being prosperous.\u00a0 You airdrop ten Americans in the desert with jackknives and plastic tubing and come back in a week and they’ll have built an ice cream machine, and <\/em>a commodity market to trade ice cream futures and spin them into complex derivatives that they can sell to the Saudis and then short-sell when the Russians move extra capacity into the sherbet market, making money on the up and <\/em>downsides.<\/p>\n

Oh, business has up and down cycles – creative destruction isn’t just a great band name.\u00a0 But as John McCain (and now Barack Obama) said, the fundamentals of the American economy – immense human and material resources, drive, constantly-replenishing intellectual capital) are more sound than in any econony on earth…<\/p>\n

…provided government gets out of the way.\u00a0 The most dismal periods in recent American history – the most extended swatches of misery – are the times when government opted to “help” solve financial crises with taxation, regulation and intervention.\u00a0 Government intervention extended the Great Depression until the beginning of World War II (and, without the war, it’d have likely lasted well into the forties) when it would likely have ended on its own by about 1937-8.\u00a0 And government regulation and aggressive taxation – the bastard children of FDR and LBJ’s policies – helped make the seventies the dismal morass they were.\u00a0 And let’s not forget that the mortgage bubble grew out of the government’s<\/em> mandates to expand sub-prime lending, socializing the risks of shoddy loans.<\/p>\n

The more you leave government out of the equation (yes, yes, make sure\u00a0 nobody’s making baby formula out of arsenic, and yes, the courts exist to an extent to help people get relief from business’ excesses), the better things are.\u00a0 Any number of the world’s great philosophers and economics and economic philosophers, from Smith to Hayek, have shown how it works; all the greatest periods in American (and world) economic history have accompanied periods of enlightened deregulation.<\/p>\n

Conservatives stand for “limited government” – but that’s another ephemeral concept to an awful lot of people.\u00a0 How do you shrink government?\u00a0 You starve it!
\nSo how do you sum that up briefly?<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Low taxes lead to free markets lead to jobs, which leads to prosperity.\u00a0 Low taxes mean you have more money; having more of the fruits of your labor at your own disposal is <\/em>freedom – very likely the most-used freedom in our society today.\u00a0 It’s the freedom to take a trip, donate to charity, put money away for your kids’ education, buy a car, change careers…whatever you choose <\/em>(which benefit in turn the travel industry, charities, banks, car dealers…)<\/p>\n

Republicans equal low taxes. Low taxes equal prosperity. Prosperity equals freedom.<\/p>\n

So how does this compare with the alternative?<\/p>\n

Democrats:\u00a0 Taxes and Control<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Democrats believe that your earnings belong first to government; that government’s mission, and keeping that mission funded, is the reason you work.\u00a0 Anything left over?\u00a0 Well, don’t spend it all in one place!<\/p>\n

When government claims the fruits of your labor, you don’t control what you do with a third of your life.\u00a0 You cede control of what you do<\/em> to the government; you cede your freedom.<\/p>\n

DFL Senator Cy Thao put it well at the beginning of the 2007 session; “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.\u00a0 When we win, we take your money!”.\u00a0 If the GOP doesn’t make up T-shirts with this saying emblazoned in white on black and distribute them througout the state, they don’t deserve to be a party.<\/p>\n

The choice is simple; freedom to enjoy the results of your hard work versus being (in effect) government property.<\/p>\n

It’s not just fuzzy-headed libertarian theory; Obama’s current spending mania is going to make you, your children, and your grandchildren into de facto <\/em>government servants for their entire lives.<\/p>\n

There’s nothing abstract about this.<\/p>\n

Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom<\/strong>.\u00a0 Democrats:\u00a0 Taxes and Control<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow:\u00a0 Education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the mission is this: dispense with the careerism and backbiting and just-plain-doesn’t-matter buncombe that occupies so much of the MNGOP’s time, and come up with a message – a message that’ll not only unite the party, but reach out to people who aren’t especially affiliated with either party to begin with.\u00a0 A message that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mngop","category-what-the-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6530,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504\/revisions\/6530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}