Good article and I hope Ruffini and others like him are able to turn around the GOP. This country needs a strong and vital conservative movement as much as it does a liberal movement to both counter the excesses of each other but also to sharpen and refine each other. I agree with the article that a big problem with the current Conservative movement is that it has become rudderless to the point of mistaking gimmicks as ideas. Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, and even Michael Steele aren't leaders, they are marketing ploys. Should it be any surprise then that intellectual luminary of movement is a Rush Limbaugh a guy who is primarily an entertainer. As long as those people are the face of the GOP the movement will continued to hampered as a movement of pitchmen rather than a movement of ideas. Another thing I'm going to add that is hampering the Conservative is movement is a recent obsession with victimhood. There are plenty of examples of this even here on Clutchfans where all of the problems of the country are attributed to Bill Clinton, Congressional Democrats, Obama, blacks, the Liberal media, UN and etc.... Conservatives have rightly criticized the politics of victimhood yet frequently indulge in that themselves. Instead of taking a hard look at what a two term Republican Administration and 12 years of a Republican Congress have done they go to great lengths to blame others. If Conservatives want to find their way back to power they are going to need to get beyond playing victim. If they don't this going to be a movement relegated more and more to the fringe as being anti-government cranks and conspiracy theorists. Conservatives need to get back to being a movement of ideas. While the article might criticize wearing buttons with Edmund Burke and Adam Smith those were men of ideas that are still both relevant and needed for America. Conservatives need to remember those ideas are more important than Joe the Plumber or blaming Bill Clinton.
I have to ask, what kind of insurance did your parent's have for you? If insurance doesn't cover accidents, what is the purpose of having any at all.
Refman's post freaking rules I'd bet 1 million dollars that zantabak1111 is simply repeating the same garbage his parents taught him. He's not even thinking about what he's typing, he's just regurgitating everything he's heard come out of his father's mouth. "Republicans work hard, democratic leaders tax us more and give our tax money to the lazy, poor, uneducated bums. blah blah blah" - and its so far from the truth
I don't what kind of insurance you had but that's just awful. My mother had factor V thrombophilia and a severe blod clot which led to her being in the intensive care unit for almost 3 weeks. In the end the total cost was $20K for us and $200K for the insurance, that's why you pay for insurance. She was dropped right after and spent a year without any coverage which was a big risk, but it's what had to be done to move to a new company. I personally am covered under my companies policy but people like my parents who operate their own businesses have to pay their own and its way to high so taxing them more is just going to force some business owners to make adjustments on their healthcare all the while the really poor get all the free healthcare they want. How fair is that, people who are rich but not uberrich are losing more to taxes, while their healthcare fees go up yet the poorest members of society are taken care of!!!
For starters, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the majority of healthcare spending in the federal budget goes to seniors, not the poor. Secondly, more than half of Medicaid spending, which does go to the poor, is spent on children, who make up about half the "poor" in American society. What exactly do you propose we do here short of letting everyone who's parents are broke die from curable and preventative diseases?
Why thank you. I like to think that I am a conservative who is not so pinned against the far right wall as to allow for reason and truly believe in "country first."
Eliminate income and property taxes so they have more money to spend on health care. Also stop the government intervention within the health care market that caused the rising costs.
thank you betterthanever. People on this forum want to hate me so much but the fact is if they were in my shoes and saw how much of my hard work goes to pay for all these nonproductive people they would complain and some. The fact is places like China people are poorer than poor but their lives are based around educating their children so the kids can become productive somewhere in the world and care for their parents later in life. American people in the lower income brackets just pop out babies, get welfare checks, and very often leave their kids to a life on the streets where they grow up and become worthless to society. Why can't we look to other countries to see how their poor develop. Education is stressed in most other countries, what's our High school dropout rate in America???????? Americans need to take care of business at home and then they'll see they don't need to go after rich people's money to help take care of their own.
Not all of them that receive it are poor. Seniors get medical benefits regardless. The point is that the idea of everyone receiving govt. assistance is a bum, is just silly. Most welfare and assistance goes to the elderly. They can't exactly go out and start a new career at this point.
Stop whining and complaining about the elderly. How productive do you expect them to be? The elderly are the largest recipients of welfare.
Where are the children of the elderly. That's the thing with American culture that really ticks me off, the parents are just old and they go to retirement homes. Our parents gave us life and it's our duty to take care of them until they pass, at our expense. Our parents sacrificed so much for us and we should be doing the same, not depending on the government to do our duty for us!
