The American Spectator

Dropping By| 5.4.09 @ 1:58PM

Man, I love The American Spectator, love your writers, love your insights, love your politics, love you all -- except when it comes to your never-give-the-guy-a-break screeds against Romney.

R. Dittmar| 5.4.09 @ 2:21PM

except when it comes to your never-give-the-guy-a-break screeds against Romney.

Romney doesn't deserve a break. If that guy ever ends up at the top of a national ticket, then the GOP loses. The only guy I can think of that I'd be less likely to support would be another Bush.

Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 5.4.09 @ 2:46PM

...except when it comes to your never-give-the-guy-a-break screeds against Romney.

That's because he doesn't deserve a break. If one doesn't want to be mistaken for a Democrat, then it would be wise not to govern like one.

Old Texican| 5.4.09 @ 2:49PM

Romney can't win for constitutional restraint!
(Conservativism)
He is a clean, fine man but he has no lightning and thunder in his makeup.
We true Americans need a leader with some fire in his belly for the Constitutional Republic we once had.
A couple of years from now, our country is going to be in the midst of the biggest train-wreck since 1861.
We are going to need leaders...who can joyfully lead us BACKWARDS toward freedom and personal dignity.
In my mind, if we cannot still produce those kinds of leaders, and convince them to lead, then the last best hope on this planet on the human level will be gone.
The lights "will go out" for a thousand years, (or ten thousand years), or until Jesus comes again.

Ladies and gentlemen we are looking "end times" right square in the eye...right in these days. We can earn one last chance to clean up our act and get serious.....or we can be the observers of the end of human kind we could even recognize.

Real American| 5.4.09 @ 3:11PM

Romney would help himself out among conservatives by actually sounding like one most of the time.

CS Lewis| 5.4.09 @ 3:49PM

Sarah Palin 2012. Real American!

Becky| 5.4.09 @ 4:53PM

I believe at the time of RomneyCare, it was thought by both sides that it just may work, but in hindsight, no matter how you slice and dice it, anything best left to the market, is best left to the market.

Ever wonder why the founders did not include a health care right? It's not like illness and death were unknown at the time.

Debbie| 5.4.09 @ 6:25PM

This is idiocy. There are no "conservative issues" and "liberal issues", just issues with conservative and liberal solutions. Until conservatives wake up and realize we have to address healthcare, environment and the like we will lose. There are many conservatives and independents who view both those issues as important. The old mantras are not working anymore, or haven't you noticed the fact we are completely out of power?

Romney's intial MA plan was approved by the conservative Heritage foundation. It was mauled and ruined by his Dem legislature.

At least Romney, Jindal and Cantor are trying while the perpetually malcontent criticize every effort. The biggest problem is found in the mirror.

Sean| 5.4.09 @ 7:02PM

Romney=Bush clone. I told my fellow Republican friends that Bush was no conservative back in 2000. I also told them Romney is no conservative. People keep saying Romney has changed, well the Presidency is too important to gamble with. Look at what happened to the Republican party with Bush's election. If Romney wants to help conservatives that is fine, but he can't be trusted with the presidency based on his past record. He should acknowledge that and just help with fundraising.

Old Texican| 5.4.09 @ 7:18PM

Hi Debbie
Great Post!
Solutions.....
healthcare
environment
and the like...
GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO ANY OF THE ABOVE!
Government solutions are merely to get re-elected and suck the people dry for as long as it may.
Healthcare...Medicare is a trainwreck. I am in the medical field. The waste and stupidity in Medicare is unbelievable. Private companies drive us crazy but at least we have OPTIONS of which company to choose.
Aetna is splendid, and costs an employer $.25 per month extra per employee. Duh!

Environmental issues: A media phenomenon! Oil producers would drive you crazy they are so careful. Thirty years ago we woke up to be clean, (good PR made it happen)...but government totalarians have pushed it so far that it is now ridiculous....to get re-elected.
Government just doesn't do things very well, or near efficiently. Our Armed forces contract out EVERYTHING (to private industry), except killing people and breaking things, which is their reason for being , thank God.
All that aside, then, do you want the soldiers in YOUR home?
Our current leaders will put our military in your home.
Enjoy!

BJC| 5.4.09 @ 7:48PM

Well, Mr. Klein! I'd thought I'd just ignore you as a mind-numbed over-application guy who believed everyone is OK by being more like you than they in reality are. You actually, just before the Carrie Prejean incident, in which she was certainly, indisputably harmed, declared you didn't see how in any way anybody was harmed by "gay marriage." Hello! The whole business about government-mandated redefinition of matrimony is about denying persons of faith the religious liberty to refuse government-dictated recognition of homosexuality as equivalent to procreative heterosexuality. (You and anybody else who wants to call a same-sex union a "marriage" can now freely do so, celebrating that however you freely choose. What you cannot now do is force those of us with religious beliefs that homosexuality is sin to shut up and go along with the "gay agenda" program. Under government-created "gay marriage" that is the only thing that changes.)

But here you go with a provocative question that I had to look into. The answer to "Did Romney Just Out Himself As A Democrat?" would of course be no. (And, hey, for consistent parallelism's sake, I'm awaiting Jim Antle's piece on "Is There An Anti-Conservative Bias Among Republican Mormons?" -- especially after Orrin Hatch grandstanded that "nobody" believes Pat Toomey can win Pennsylvania.) All that Romney "outed himself" as would be accurately deemed a "big government corporatist-elitist." One misconstrual hampering reconstruction of the Right Republican Party is reluctance to admit the split between true free marketeers and big government top-down corporatists. An axiom that Republicans ought to take as given is that government cannot create a free market; that mistaken belief, that Massachusetts could "create" a health insurance policy market, is where Romney went wrong. Government, at any level, can restrict itself in order to create conditions of freedom in which free citizens can make their own free market -- but that's a far cry from Massachusetts demanding that each and every citizen buy a medical policy from only a government-dictated set of government-favored treatment options. For anybody like Romney who's been highly successful in top-down internationalist finance the temptation is to over-application of the capacity of top-down restrictive mandated schemes to succeed -- instead of favoring a stand-aside so that free citizens can choose freely.

And, no, Romney gets no pass from me for Deval Patrick and Massachusetts Democrats worsening his already-bad proposal for government-mandated and -controlled health insurance than George W. Bush gets for setting up the top-down bailout scheme that Obama has worsened.

Debbie| 5.4.09 @ 8:04PM

Old Texican, don't bother preaching to me on healthcare. I am a RN working the field since the 80s. Everyone with actual experience knows the system is about to go under.

The rest of your post is irrational hysteria - a perfect snapshot of what is wrong with the base's thinking.

Roy| 5.4.09 @ 10:02PM

Debbie: Well - ok fine, nobody says things are good now. Right now, the government controls a huge mass of the healthcare market through Medicare and Medicaid, plus things like the VA, and massively distorts the rest through regulation and taxes.

So why is "things stink now" = "more government"? To me, things stink now because of existing government interference, and the reflex should be things stink now = LESS government. Why is it the sectors with the most massive, intrusive government interference that see endlessly rising costs(college, healthcare)? The government removes any incentive on the part of consumers to control costs and therefore they skyrocket. How this works out in practice may be very complex, but that it works out in practice seems inevitable.

Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 5.4.09 @ 11:02PM

...a perfect snapshot of what is wrong with the base's thinking.

If that's how you feel, you can always follow Specter's footsteps....

Debbie| 5.4.09 @ 11:11PM

Blacque, I'm sure there's a third party somewhere with your name on it. Do us a favor and find it before conservatives go the way of the Whigs.

Debbie| 5.4.09 @ 11:18PM

Roy, where in my post did you conclude I am calling for more government? Don't read things that aren't there.

Reform is meant to prevent socialized medicine and get government off our backs. Healthcare has many problems right now. Those who scream tired old mantras have given us Obama and a soon to be Canadian style healthcare system where pregnant women wait 10 months for a delivery bed.

We reap what we sow.

Roy| 5.5.09 @ 12:46AM

I suppose when I hear somebody say that conservatives are chanting tired old mantras, or saying the base is filled with irrational hysteria, I figure they mean the conservatives are reflexively resisting bigger government.

Maybe your point was instead that Romney's health plan did not represent government encroachment? If so the problem is not with conservatives chanting mantras but with failure to understand that Romney's plan was consistent with said mantras.

Eric Damon| 5.5.09 @ 8:04AM

Hey Debbie,

You said in one of your posts that the MA legislature mangled Romney's healthcare bill before it became law. But doesn't it say something about Romney that he signed a bad bill instead of vetoing it when he had the chance? Why could he have not vetoed that bill, gone to his constituency and explained that his bill had been fudamentally changed , therefore he could not in good conscience foist a socialistic healthcare syetem upon them? By signing the legislation he gave it his approval, and trying to rewrite history now isn't going to cut it. Mitt Romney had a choice betweening socializing the MA medical system and keeping it relatively market based, and he chose the former. He made his choice with his pen, and nothing we say can undo it now.

Thomas| 5.5.09 @ 11:09AM

The healthcare industry illustrates the current situation in this country perfectly. Here we have an industry that expanded literally exponentially since 1960, not because of need, but because of profit. And the single driving force behind that expansion was the government funded, third-party payer system. Across the country, we have huge hospitals standing virtually empty. Where was the demand for their construction? It didn't exist. And in a truly competitive environment, a large percentage of them would not have been built. They were built because with guaranteed reimbursement, they were initially profitable. But, as with everything else that the government touches, publicly supported health care has proven to be a bust.

In the first place, insurers, including the government, want to protect themselves from predatory charges. Therefor, they only pay a percentage of the fee charged by the provider. This causes the provider to raise his prices to the point where the third-party payer will pay his target fee. Many doctors used to have two fee schedules, one for patients with insurance and another, lower scale, for those paying cash. In most states, this practice is now illegal; which forces patients to have insurance or forgo some treatments. Now, it has become clear that an increasingly sizable portion of the population can not afford private health insurance or medical care, because the costs have been driven so high by a government sponsored third-party payer system. So, we have a catch-22 situation. The population is rapidly approaching the point where the individual can not afford healthcare without government support, but government can not afford to support the existing healthcare system without draconian cuts. What to do, what to do. Whatever is done, someone is going to suffer. But, the point is that government third-party payer programs [principally Medicare] bear a large responsibility for the current situation.

When it comes to government sponsored healthcare, which is better; some people suffer or everyone suffers? You make the choice.

Robert W.| 5.5.09 @ 6:00PM

Old Texican has itso right. If we don't return to the free market system and also to true conservatism in D.C., then we are doomed to be the next USSR. Obama has already begun to drag our country to Marxism. He wrote in recruitment pamphlets for Acorn that he chose his friends carefully,while a student in Chicago, as he preferred to hang out only with Marxists. He also wrote that, while a student in New York, he spent a good deal of his time going and listening to Marxist speakers.

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