UNCLE!!!

[lomiller]

Unfortunately, neither party is worth a damn regarding fiscal responsibility. Democrats think every problem can be solved with massive social spending, and Republicans always promise to cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget, but they are not remotely serious about balancing the budget, and they always ignore the fact that they can't do the first two and also do the third.

Some of the most effective and well loved programs the US government has ever delivers qualify as “massive social spending”, that being Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Even among Republican voter these programs enjoy support upwards of 80%. Even welfare, once you get past the superficial stuff and into what people feel would be a valid reason for public assistance, is generally consistent with what Republican voters support.

The real problem with US deficits is that these mandatory spending programs along with defense related spending that Republicans wildly support and Democrats grudgingly support combined to make up 90% of the budget. Most of the remaining, while not part of the mandatory budget is still essential. The “massive” social spending Republicans think Democrats want is an almost insignificant part of the overall budget. So, wrt to spending both parties largely support almost exactly the same spending levels.

The result is Republicans tend to incorrectly believe that massive tax cuts can be offset with insignificant program cuts. When they gain sufficient influence to set policy the inevitable end result is a massive increase in deficits.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Well, I see theprestige was able to successfully derail a thread about the GOP's shortcomings into a discussion of Marxism-Leninism.

Good job.

Whats wrong with being a loon? Or going beyond remotely practical?

And here ^^^^^ is the next attempt.

 

[phiwum]

Nothing if you're another loon.

For the rest of us, loons can be viewed as unpleasant tasting birds.

Assuming you're in the US (which I'm not sure is true), how could you (legally) know the taste of a loon? Are they legal to hunt?

ETA: To be fair, if this post is moved to AAH, I'll understand. Just mildly curious. Never eaten (non-human) loon myself.

 

[phiwum]

I had a flirtation with Libertariansim, but a good look at their foreign policy cooled the relationship,and when you begin to talk about getting rid of health regulations and fire codes, you are in loon territory.

There are somewhat more reasonable flavors, and there are some ways in which I still favor certain Libertarian ideals, but when I realized that your "right" not to wear a helmet might seriously harm my interests (if I hit you and kill you, it's hard to say how much was due to your choice and thus I expect a much greater responsibility for the otherwise minor accident), I decided that much of the Libertarian principle was difficult to implement in a just way.

As a car driver, I prefer that motorcycle riders wear helmets or else that I'm completely not to blame for head injuries. The latter condition isn't something that Libertarians tend to accept (and for some decent reasons), but I don't know a middle ground.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

@OP - Thanks for the post. I have a great deal of respect for old-school conservatives. Agreed, the Dems are quite a mess, too. Independent sounds like a sober choice.

 

[lomiller]

I have to agree with you on libertarians, at least the Libertarian Party. I tend to agree in principle with the idea of social progressivism combined with fiscal responsibility, but most of them want to go way too far with the fiscal part; far beyond anything remotely practical, for the most part.

Libertarians tend to learn the idealized models used to explain the value of free markets to beginner students in economics and then just stop. In practice all mainstream economics focus on the practical implementation of these idealized models.

This means regulations aimed at addressing the practical deficiencies of the idealized model or in some cases outright ditching the free market model altogether to get the desired result. Within mainstream economics there is a wide range of opinion on what to regulate, how strongly to regulate it and what you simply need to do another way. All of this, however, falls outside the Libertarian ideal of just implementing the idealized model.

The end result here is that most economists, even those that generally fall on the less regulation/intervention side of the spectrum, move towards Democrats when it comes to fully fleshed out policy plans. (excluding cases like global warming where some won’t support a proposed solution because they deny the scientific evidence for the root problem)

 

[Craig4]

Whats wrong with being a loon? Or going beyond remotely practical?

Because to actually govern you can't be a loon and you have to be actually practical. Why does anyone have to tell you something so bleeding obvious? If you're a loon and not practical, you don't count. You're not important and don't matter.

 

[Craig4]

How about if we had a Republican party where you could be a pacifist like Mark Hatfield, pro science like Tom McCall and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and pro fiscal discipline like Alan Simpson? I'd be a Republican if being a Republican didn't mean I had to stop being intellectual.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Because to actually govern you can't be a loon and you have to be actually practical. Why does anyone have to tell you something so bleeding obvious? If you're a loon and not practical, you don't count. You're not important and don't matter.

There is nothing to stop implementation of an impractical policy.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Libertarians tend to learn the idealized models used to explain the value of free markets to beginner students in economics and then just stop. In practice all mainstream economics focus on the practical implementation of these idealized models.

This means regulations aimed at addressing the practical deficiencies of the idealized model or in some cases outright ditching the free market model altogether to get the desired result. Within mainstream economics there is a wide range of opinion on what to regulate, how strongly to regulate it and what you simply need to do another way. All of this, however, falls outside the Libertarian ideal of just implementing the idealized model.

The end result here is that most economists, even those that generally fall on the less regulation/intervention side of the spectrum, move towards Democrats when it comes to fully fleshed out policy plans. (excluding cases like global warming where some won’t support a proposed solution because they deny the scientific evidence for the root problem)

I know what economists say libertarian policies will do. I agree with them. I'm still a libertarian.

 

[SezMe]

 

[BStrong]

I was so pissed off and sick of both the democrats and republicans last Presidential cycle I voted for Gary Johnston. As goofy as he is/was he couldn't do as much damage as Trump and owed less favors than Clinton.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

An enjoyable thread, all things considered. A tip of the chapeau, FEB.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

 

[BobTheCoward]

I was so pissed off and sick of both the democrats and republicans last Presidential cycle I voted for Gary Johnston. As goofy as he is/was he couldn't do as much damage as Trump and owed less favors than Clinton.

If I had my choice I would vote for Johnson. But I have strict policy of voting for who my wife wants.

 

[fuelair]

For my entire adult life I’ve been a “Registered Republican”.

Overall I think I’m socially liberal, or even libertarian, but fiscally conservative. In any case I’ve called myself a Republican, and generally voted Republican or abstained in the Presidential election as I did in 2008 and 2016.

But enough is enough! I’m done.

It’s been building for a long time, but this recent budget was the final straw. But I’ve been increasingly disgusted with Republicans at least since the 2016 Presidential Primary. The selection of Trump is a major, but hardly isolated cause of my disgust.

Today, I went so far as to call my local voting board to change my affiliation to Independent. Turns out Georgia does not register voters by party affiliation - you declare which primary ballot you want at the time of voting. I was probably thinking of my prior state of residence, Florida.

I’m not thrilled with the current state of the Democratic Party either. But I more and more often find myself on “their side” of issues. If there are more disgruntled Republicans like me out there, the Democrats can only benefit from the overall disillusionment of sensible Republicans at the sordid mess their party has become. Hopefully a viable third party can emerge from this chaos and offer more palatable options than we’ve been presented with recently.

Thanks for listening - I just needed to vent.

United Network Command for Law and Order (iirc).

 

[Aridas]

I'd like for you to find any political scientist or acredited historian that arranges Nazism anywhere but on the extreme right of the political scale.

Fascism, in general, is associated with the far right of the spectrum. Not all iterations of it are completely far right, though. Nazism is a form of fascism that co-opted a socialist (notably left) party, and didn't shed many of the elements from the left, which makes it a poor fit for the left-right spectrum.

Communism as practiced however is anything but left wing. It was taken over by right wing authoritarianism resulting in a system where the party elite have wealth and privilege and the workers are keep poor and under the control of the State. It was a total bastardization if the socialist model.

You'll get little disagreement with me there. That's one of the major reasons why I don't acknowledge those systems as actually communist, falling into the more general category of "important parts that don't even come close to matching the essential principles."

Unfortunately, neither party is worth a damn regarding fiscal responsibility.

Yeah. That's one of my major gripes with them, honestly. I'm very much a proponent of fiscal responsibility.

Democrats think every problem can be solved with massive social spending, and Republicans always promise to cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget, but they are not remotely serious about balancing the budget, and they always ignore the fact that they can't do the first two and also do the third.

As for Republicans... the crop from the last few decades made it completely and totally clear that they're horrendously fiscally irresponsible, while hiding behind a "righteous" facade of fiscal conservatism as they try to sabotage Democrats for what look like primarily political reasons.

I was disgusted with the Republicans before they nominated Trump, but with Trump, they have abandoned the few remaining principals they claimed to have, and have saddled the country with someone who couldn't possibly be less fit for the job. Of course, I also blame the Democrats, especially Hillary, for making Trump appear, to at least some protion of swing voters, like possibly a less bad alternative.

They didn't abandon their current core principle of trying to make themselves and their rich friends richer with tax reform and removing those costly regulations!

I was going to say that the only instance I'm aware of that communism actually worked for any significant period of time is in monastic orders...but then I realized that a) they were all religious in nature and thus operated with a completely different set of values than society at large and b) the successful monastic communities either lapsed into capitalist corruption as a whole, becoming enormously wealthy landowners as a group, or else they lapsed into capitalist corruption at the top alone, with an enormously wealthy abbot, or they passed all the wealth along to a greater church hierarchy. But by nature of being monastic communities to begin with they were already not accurate models of regular society, so even if they did manage to last and not turn capitalist to some degree or at some level, it wouldn't actually be demonstrating the success of the economic theory.

Pretty much. Of note here, though, is that it is fundamentally wrong to try to treat it as an economic theory, given that there isn't really an economy in actual communism. Rather, one of the premises of any attempt to apply it to a larger scale is that there is already an overabundance of resources that can simply be distributed pretty much whereever there's need.

 

[The Don]

I'm still not clear about what major policy platforms the Democratic Party have that would make them unacceptable to moderate Republicans and thus force the creation of a third party.

I mean I can see where the FOXNews version of their policies would jar, but not the actual policies themselves.

 

[Bob001]

The GOP is the worst thing ever. Except for Communism. The Left's implicit support of communism, along with their support of any policy that might advance communism, is the only thing keeping me from switching sides. That and all the leftist douchebags I've met on this board.

What do you think "communism" means? Do you think countries that have universal health insurance, like, say, Canada, the UK and Japan (and everybody else), are "communist?" Do you think countries that impose tough restrictions on firearms like, say, the UK, Australia (and, again, everybody else) are "communist?" Do you think countries that have stronger protections for workers than the U.S. are "communist?" Do you think countries that make university education affordable are "communist?" Do you think countries that tax the wealthiest to maintain a safety net for the poorest are "communist?" Etc., etc.

"Communism" was one of those "monster under your bed" images that was used to frighten the unthinking during the '50s. But today it's just a word. It's not so scary anymore. What does it mean to you?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
I'm not clear on what major planks of the current Democratic Party platform (as opposed to the FOXNews version of it) a moderate Republican has a major beef with .

It's all about the marketed messages. Reality does not apply.