Are Republican Party policies the root cause of nearly all of our problems?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is nothing wrong with realizing that current position is incorrect. I personally wouldn't mind if the tax rates were back at the Clinton era for the wealthy and maybe even a little higher. On the other hand, on issues like entitlement reform or corporate tax code reform, the Democrats typically get it wrong because they are more concerned with rhetoric then reality when it comes to the numbers on these things.

If you want to get at big banks, the best approach is not regulation, which the banks welcome because they can navigate it with their armies of lawyers and win special favors and carve outs. Instead, what you need is a smarter effective approach to regulation that discourages monopolies and also the risky behaviors, whilst incentivizing the competition and maintaining the necessary competativeness that will prevent things like the crash.

A low corporate income tax, with few to no special breaks or subsidies combined with a higher cap gains and dividend tax would probably yield fewer of these monopolies. But then again, it is not one party or the other that is going to be better on this question since Democrats would raise taxes acros the board, and Republicans would cut the across the board.

Adhering to an ideology doesn't require blanket approval for what that ideology currently or previosuly stood for. Goldwater opposed tax cuts as irresponsible. Taft opposed foreign intervention and wars as wasteful. Taft supported Civil Rights and Everett Dirksen was critical to passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but no one doubts they were Conservatives in a broader context.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One has to acknowledge the difference between Conservatism and Reactionary politics. Conservatism embraces change through legalistic channels, and rejects populism and demogoguery. Reactionary wants to preserve an outdated values set and rejects change outright. Modern Conservatism has its roots in the liberal Whig philosophy of the mid 18th century in England, courtesy of Edmund Burke. Burke was not a reactionary and called for reforms including with regards to both how Ireland was treated by England and with regards to corruption. It is not about embracing the status quo because it is simply the status quo, it is about reforming in a cautious manner.

Social Conservativism is not evil. There is nothing inherently evil about seeking to preserve societal structures and institutions that one deems necessary for society to function. Society has rendered a current Socially Conservative position on marriage to be outdated, true. Society cannot handle too much change or it will tear itself apart. Conservatism by definition is inherently about slowing things down so that society can absorb and react to changes without breaking. In a sense though with a non-elected institution, striking down the misguided will of the people in this sense, the process is one that is inherently conservative in the line with Burkean thought. At least in the sense of rejecting populist-demogoguery.

Real conservatives like Taft and Dirksen supported Civil Right up until the point where it came to ensuring equal rights and voting, and opposed going further on issues like busing and the like.

Reactionaries and pandering politicians, supported the continuance of segregation, opposed inter-racial marriage and the like. The Republican Party openly embraced these types of politicians in the 1960's and 1970's in order to build a viable Conservative coalition off the backs of "lesser of two evil voters" ("not a dimes worth of a difference" is a a quote from George Wallace in 1968). But there was time when a Conservative meant opposing foreign wars, balancing the budget (even it meant raising taxes) and supporting Civil Rights for African Americans.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The way the OP uses the word 'progress' reminds me a little of the movie Braveheart with its completely unelaborated concept of 'freedom'. As Beet said, the only way presenting 'progress' itself as inherently good and 'social conservatism' itself as inherently evil makes any sense at all is if one is both a believer of some stripe in the concept of permanent revolution and basically amoral about what the exact content of the revolution should be. This is why I haven't described my own political views as 'progressive' in years.

If you want to get at big banks, the best approach is not regulation, which the banks welcome because they can navigate it with their armies of lawyers and win special favors and carve outs. Instead, what you need is a smarter effective approach to regulation that discourages monopolies and also the risky behaviors, whilst incentivizing the competition and maintaining the necessary competativeness that will prevent things like the crash.

I can't really parse the second sentence of this paragraph. The following paragraph helps somewhat, but only somewhat. Would you mind expanding on it a little bit?

Basically regulate with a purpose. A goal to be achieved. You don't just regulate for achieve some false sense of control or security that will inevitably fail. Instead you regulate to preserve competition and prevent the monopolization, but not beyond what is necessary to do that. You keep it simple, you avoid the carve outs and exemptions and such forth that let Wall STree get off scott free even with the most stringent of regulations. You focus on preventing banks from becoming too big to fail, so big that their mistakes can tank a nation or the global economy. Then you can let a bank fail and let them eat the fruits of their stupidity and irresponsible behavior and not cause a Depression by doing it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think evidence shows that tax cuts are not some magic bullet like the blowhard talking heads suggest. An endless stream of wealth to be returned to the private sector that was being occupied by the government and its wasteful spending.

You do have diminishing returns and once your tax rates are already low, cutting them again is not going to yield much results. Cutting them from 90% to 70% or from 70% to 28% is a different story obviously.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If one truly believes the thread title (or the mirror of it) they have no business discussing politics in mixed company.  How could a political party that doesn't control the vast majority of the political power in a country be the root cause of nearly all it's problems?

Basically, RR-997 is saying there is no debate.  Yes there is, and it's why we have these subfora!  I just caws annoyed by how he just glibly dismissed social consevatism using the mantra of progress.  Progress to where?   That's an important issue!


This is why we can't just say things with no qualifiers.

Its kind of like the push to lay all the blame for Slavery at the feat of religion. Does the faith based, faith originated opposition to Slavery just vanish, or become illegimate simply because the churches in the South were hijacked along with every other institution, by the necessities of preserving a slave state? Of course not.

You have to differentiate between situational/relative conservatism and a conservatism based off of a ideology or a philosophy. RR1997 is making the classic sg0508 mistake here and is applying the relative conservative position in each of these fights and equating that with ideological conservatism. When you are not a social conservative it is the easiest thing in the world to just write it off and throw it under the bus rather then defend it or push back against all the criticism.

There are some ideas and some values that are worth defending against the constant push for change, and at some level social conservatism is a necesary force.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The results of this poll officially debunks the myth that Atlas is a left-wing forum.

What did you expect? Many liberals blame their own party as well for signing off on the march to the right on economic policy, regulation etc and so it is hard to blame the Republicans alone when their own Party in its desperate lust for power has been complicit.

Most Republicans whilst not approving of everything they do, believe in the party's beliefs enough to think that some aspect of Democratic policies, be it teacher's unions on education and public sector unions on state and local level budget insolvency, or foreign policy or whatever, has contributed a greater amount to the current problems.

Many others blame both parties hence why they aren't members of either party.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It would have been neater if the Democrats had backed into the pie a tax hike in 2010 taking effect in 2015 or 2016, but they were reading off a book of "what we did in 1993, lets not do that". They failed to pass healthcare, so Obama/Pelosi/Reid got it done whatever the cost. In 1993 they passed Gun control, so The trifecta allowd guns on national parks if I am not mistaken. In 1993 they raised taxes, so Obama left the Bush tax cuts in place when he had the votes to end them.

All of this was designed to avoid a repeat of 1994. Of course it didn't work. However, had he raised taxes, the fallout in some areas would have been worse, especially those suburbs where the Democrats have gained the most at the expense of Republicans.

This needs to be considered as to why the Republicans can keep up the tax mantra and that is a large portion of the Democrats' coalition now are people who will not be happy if that tax rate goes above a certain percent.