The American Spectator

Floyd Looney| 8.9.09 @ 1:21PM

Please do not confuse conservative and Republican.

ConservativeWanderer| 8.9.09 @ 1:40PM

Mr. Antle, while I agree in the long term, let us not lose focus in the short term. As a famous book said, "the main thing is to keep the main thing The Main Thing."

We can worry about fixing health care the conservative way after--not before--we defeat the lefty way. Otherwise we risk not defeating the lefty way and losing forever our chance to reform it the conservative way.

Teflon93| 8.9.09 @ 1:56PM

And do you believe that Frum and his fellow travelers support free market healthcare alternatives?

Mary| 8.9.09 @ 2:06PM

I would gladly shop and pay for my own health insurance. Not that long ago I carried my own policy for an affordable rate. My deduction was high, but I knew that I could come up with that $500, even at minimum wage, which was what I was earning at the time. It was just a matter of economizing, beginning with food and ending with entertainment. Hospitals and doctors and dentists were willing to allow me to pay over a few months time. I know it's repetitive, but this is exactly where personal responsibility comes in. No one is entitled to appropriate, without payment, a physician's expertise, skill and treatment. And, if 80% of the Nation is satisfied with current and available health care, neither republicans nor democrats need to approach healthy reform at break-neck speed.

It's astounding how easily Obama and his band of theoreticians would overturn what took decades to create, whatever its imperfections. They're absolutely nihilistic or power hungry or both. That the democrats would ram this through is the undeniable tell.

I do think we have an educable public. There is that small minority of people who can't think past entitlement, but they're not calling the shots here, at least not yet. At NRO, Mike Ptomera reported that they're even balking in Boulder.

We have a lot going for us in this debate.

Obamacare is mistrusted for good reasons. Chief among them being Popper's "law of unintended consequences," making things much worse and creating ineradicable defects.

Not all snake oil salesmen believe they're selling snake oil. Some actually think it will do what it purports to do. Common sense knows better.

WSJ has a good piece today in Notable and Quotable:

"He [Leszek Kolakowski] provided an objective description of the main ideas and diverse currents of Marxist thinking, but at the same time characterized Marxism as “the greatest fantasy of our century [which] began in a Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalin”. . . .

In an article published in 1975, he observed that the experience of Communism had shown that “the only universal medicine (Marxists) have for social evils—State ownership of the means of production—is not only perfectly compatible with all the disasters of the capitalist world—with exploitation, imperialism, pollution, misery, economic waste, national hatred and national oppression, but it adds to them a series of disasters of its own: inefficiency, lack of economic incentives and above all the unrestricted rule of the omnipresent bureaucracy, a concentration of power never before known in human history”.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/lrpgfl

Sean| 8.9.09 @ 2:55PM

If we were not able to implement free market principals while the Republicans held Congress and the Presidency we darn sure are not going to be able to get anything good out of this Congress. The best approach is to put for free market ideas and torpedo anything this Congress comes up with.

John - TMF| 8.9.09 @ 3:58PM

I made lots of models when I was a kid. Plastic, wooden, whatever. They were fun, and I built just about anything that was available to build.

One Christmas, my parents gave me a couple of prize models, really expensive ones. A USS Constitution, a Panzer Mk IV or V that was remote controlled (it had wires connected to motors with transmissions, and a sprung suspension...), and several others...

Well I got to building everything at once... the USS Constitution ended up a gluy broken mess, and the tank refused to run.

My father sat me down and told me that I had just learned a very important lesson. DO ONE THING AT A TIME. Do it to the best of your ability, and when you are done, then and only then move on to the next project.

The ship was a total loss. So I sad down with all of my 11 year old wits, took the tank apart, and followed the instructions, and carefully, a step at a time built it. When we put the 4 D batteries into it... and pushed the buttons on the remote for forward.. the tank sprung to life, and drove forward.

Later we tested the back functions, and how to steer a tank without throwing a track.

Maybe, just maybe... we stop the mess FIRST... Clear out the wreckage... Then we can go to actually fixing the problem. I sure hope that we don't do like I did, though and lose the Constitution in the process.

R/TMF

Aaron| 8.9.09 @ 4:30PM

Mr. Antle,

Thanks for re-re-restating the obvious about coming up with and implementing a conservative solution. Now, convince the others to stop giving the boy wonder Bush speech writer from Canada a platform on Spectator via copy, paste & link.

Teflon93| 8.9.09 @ 4:46PM

(crickets) on the question as to whether Frum and like-minded Fauxcons actually propose free-market healthcare reform.

I've seen no evidence he or they do. They merely want socialized medicine slower and cheaper, right?

Solo| 8.9.09 @ 7:27PM

"Floyd Looney" Wrote:

"Please do not confuse conservative and Republican. "

Yes, Floyd. And...please don't confuse "democrat" with anything other than 'radical leftist'.

ConservativeReader| 8.9.09 @ 9:42PM

SOLO- Don't confuse conservative with lunatic fringe.

Jocon307| 8.10.09 @ 6:46AM

"One of the biggest mistakes conservatives made after defeating X was to declare victory and go home rather than pursue policies that would create a freer market X."

This is the perpetual mistake. This is how we fail to advance an agenda that would actually help people. Even now, there is no alternative being proposed by the right, or the republicans, even now, when people are engaged and might actually LISTEN to some boring stuff.

I think we need to admire the dems for one thing alone, when they get the reins of power they strive hard to put their plans in place. Our side seems to only worry about ticking off the NY Times, et al. and thereby (they seem to think) losing that power.

It's frustrating to say the least.

World Vitamins Online| 8.10.09 @ 8:24AM

The republicans not only missed an opportunity, they still have not come up with an alternative, only objections. They are not leading this country because that is not how you lead.

Teflon93| 8.10.09 @ 10:05AM

Those of you who like to repeat the Fauxcon canard that Republicans need to "present an alternative plan to win please kindly explain to the rest of us how the Autocrats won in 2006 and 2008 while refusing to do any such thing. They simply ran against Bush.

Fauxcons are full of it. It will be perfectly sufficient in 2010 to not be Pelosi and Reid and in 2012 to not be Obama, given the mess these colossal idiots have made of things.