by Doug on February 26, 2009
in Politics
In a book published in 2000, which looks to now be out of print, David Horowitz defined The Art of Political War. His premise is that the Democrats are engaged in something different from what the Republicans believe they are engaged in. One believes they are fighting a war, and one believes they are debating policy. Can you guess which is which?
Horowitz’s premise is laid out here.
When Republicans complain about forces they cannot control, they behave like victims and give up the power to determine their fate. Democrats will be Democrats. They will be unprincipled and lie. Republicans can hope Democrats will behave better than this, but if Republicans go into battle expecting Democrats to be better than they are, they will only set themselves up for political ambush. Instead of complaining about others, Republicans should be asking themselves: How do they do it? How do they get away with it? What do they know that makes them able to package a bankrupt political agenda and sell it successfully to the American voter?
Here are the principles of political war that the left understands, but conservatives do not:
- Politics is war conducted by other means.
- Politics is a war of position.
- In political warfare, the aggressor usually prevails.
- Position is defined by fear and hope.
- The weapons of politics are symbols evoking fear and hope.
- Victory lies on the side of the people.
Can I summarize that for you? Republicans need to stop whining that the media is in the tank for the Democrats, and learn to understand the principles of political combat. Moreover, they need to learn to anticipate the moves of the Democrats where legislative matters are concerned, or in the context of campaign strategy and rhetoric.
President Obama last night threw his full weight behind enacting “health care reform” this year. (I put that in quotes not because it’s precisely what he said, but rather because nobody knows what he means when he uses those words. It’s one of the many campaign promises on which Obama was especially slippery about defining.)
This is a complex problem to tackle. There are many interested groups: insurers, hospital operating companies, physicians, patient advocates, employers. To put it mildly, consensus is going to be hard to come by.
One group I left out of that list is trial lawyers. These are the people who rake in millions of dollars every year from damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits. (People like former Senator John Edwards.) So long as physicians are left in the position of being subject to multi-million dollar judgements as a result of any actual or perceived mistake in the care they prescribed to a patient, they will continue to practice defensive medicine. The additional diagnostic test that has a 10% chance of adding new information to the patient’s file will be ordered, as the risks of not doing so are too great should the patient experience complications that could be characterized by lawyers as the result of error, oversight, or negligence on the part of the physician. Such defensive practices, along with the malpractice insurance premiums which physicians pay and must recoup from their patients, play a very significant part in driving up the cost of medical care.
If tort reform is not part of the health care reform package, can it be successful?
Ron Paul in the house Financial Services Committee. (h/t: Mark A. Horne)
by Doug on February 24, 2009
in Politics
In the weeks just before the presidential election, and the months between the election and inauguration, I heard many speculate that Obama would probably govern from the center in order to be more able to draw Republican members of Congress across the aisle. If you’re still holding onto that idea, thinking that Pres. Obama would [...]
The video below is from a 1979 episode of Phil Donahue’s program. Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Donahue put him on the spot to defend capitalism and the greed that drives it. His response is as timely today as it was then. (h/t: Mark Smith)
Pat Buchanan published an opinion column on Friday that addresses the decline of the United States’ ability to support her interests in the world. As usual for Pat, it is an interesting read. Buchanan links national influence and power in world affairs to a nation’s share of total world product – her manufacturing output, essentially. [...]
Phil Gramm had an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal on Friday. While nothing in the column cited the Forbes column that I wrote about last night, he makes a good case for the more likely causes of the present turmoil in the U.S. economy as of this date. I’ll leave it [...]
Nouriel Roubini, a business professor at NYU, in his column this week for Forbes, pronounced the death of Laissez-Faire capitalism as a result of the current economic turmoil. I must object. We haven’t been in a Laissez-Faire system for many decades, at the least. The U.S. government has done all they can to impede market [...]
