General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Should a Democrat always disagree with everything a Republican says? [View all]mick063
(2,424 posts)Last edited Sun Jul 21, 2013, 11:35 PM - Edit history (1)
I'll start by saying that Paul's overall vision is a very bad vision. Bad for the working man. Bad for the nation. I can't ever picture myself voting for him for any position. Perhaps when the day comes that our government is blatantly non representative I will entertain the idea of castrating it like Paul intends to do. I have not completely given up hope on the representation part yet. Politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders provide glimmers of hope. The Democratic Party must view the representative part as a threat. I will not hesitate to work against it if I perceive that the party has shifted away from representing all Americans and chooses to represent just a privileged few instead.
Having said that, Paul has more than a couple of proposals that fall into line with what I believe is the right thing to do. They are not, by the way, proposals that Paul magically came up with out of thin air. He didn't invent them, so to claim that supporting such proposals are akin to supporting Paul is false equivalency.
Robbing ideas is nothing new. "Obamacare" is a Heritage Foundation idea. It is "Romenycare" in Massachusetts on a national scope. It is also bad health care policy relative to much better alternatives regardless of who dreamed it up or who implemented it. It is a bad compromise.
Associating policy exclusively to specific individuals, or even specific political parties, is dumb. There is good policy and bad policy. Period.
How do I define good policy from bad policy? It is relatively simple. Policy that benefits the greatest number of Americans is good policy. Policy that benefits a relatively small number of Americans, at the expense of most Americans, is bad policy. For example, ALEC is the poster child for developing what meets my definition of bad policy.