Is Lunar not the only one who marks JC down as his personal hero, ass-hole? 
I actually agree with your approach on all of your responses, with a few minor quibbles (being open to health care models based on other countries' experiences in principle, even if admitting it's not a feasible solution in the American political context, being more pro-gun for pragmatic reasons).
I think all of us are guilty of, what was that term I just used in another thread?, ideologically pre-scripted policies, that's right, and then realizing that the issues are more complex than we like to simplify them down to....some of which boil down to conflicting persuasive moral principles (abortion), and others which get boiled down to rhetorically charged words ("government takeover" "single-payer") with little interest in how the actual policy turns out....which results in a "compromise" which is barely tolerable to a majority of legislators assortments of special interests which care about different things. I mean, with all the talk of the evil health insurance industry opposing health care reform, it's mostly lost that the prescription drug industry is spending $150m in support of it in exchange for some looser regulations on new technology patents to prevent them from becoming generics (and more people having access helps them too).... anyway...I'm not sure what I was trying to say. I doubt I agree with any hilarious set of guiding partisan principles and it'd be offensive if anyone tried to impose that on my party. Those principles don't stem from any meta theory of governance, as you said, they are just the aggregate product of the moment from the coalition that makes up Republican-inclined voters.
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