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Friday, November 22, 2013

Real World Republican Goals, By Ezra Klein


Quick!
Name one positive policy McConnell supports.

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The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its persistent postulation of a socio-economic (and racial) threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.  The sooner the better.  Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice, hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. 

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"There's a lazy but popular analysis of U.S. politics that holds that liberals need the government to work while conservatives benefit when it fails. That notion woefully underestimates the real-world implications of conservative goals. In their ambition to reformulate every major government program, Republicans have embraced changes with greater complexity and scope than anything Democrats now promote. An America in which the federal government can successfully run Medicaid but can't build functional exchanges has no place for Ryan's far-reaching reforms. An America in which government can't alter the benefits it currently bestows on citizens without retreating from the political backlash is a dead end for contemporary conservatism." Ezra Klein in Bloomberg





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