During my time in college, I was fully engaged in the passion of political debates. I remember going to my first college republicans meeting excited to hear the debate on the club's platform. The first proposal out of the box was to "eliminate all entitlement programs immediately." I listened with amusement as folks were advocating this position with zeal, passion, and fervor.
I was blown away.
Setting aside my belief that there will always be a few folks out there in need of some level of government assistance (e.g. folks who aren't able to provide for themselves, have no family to help, and aren't plugged in with various churches and community non-profit organizations); setting that aside for a moment, a categorical elimination of all entitlement programs was simply ridiculous. It would never get votes on the floor of the House and Senate, and signature by the President. It would never happen. Yet these college republicans were spending so much time and emotional capital on it. And the proposal was adopted.
I walked out of the meeting never to return.
This college-era recollection was brought to my minds as I caught coverage today of the press gaggle around Mrs. Palin at her bus stop just a few clicks away from Mr. Romney's announcement party. Mrs. Palin repeated several times that while she conceded that then-Governor Romney's health care plan for Massachusetts was better than a federal plan, her opposition to "Romney-care" was based in her opposition to "government mandates." She repeated this non-qualified opposition to government mandates several times.
I kept listening for some sort of qualifier to this position, and each time she repeated this belief (or talking point - because it was repeated so often in the exact same words), she never hesitated or qualified it.
The irrationality of this thought process is as mind boggling as those college republicans. If she opposes the plan because of certain components or features of it, I can understand that. I can even understand opposition to the plan because she doesn't think government should be involved with health care at any level (which, if I'm generous, I could assume is her actual belief). But her opposition - stated over and over again - is rooted in her unqualified opposition to government mandates.
I think just about everyone on the conservative side of the great debate would agree that, in general, government mandates should be alternatives of last resort in most cases, or alternatives of no resort in some cases. However, her apparent belief is that there are no cases in which a government mandate is good.
Safety standards for highway overpasses and bridges? Registering with Selective Service? Drivers licenses? These are all government mandates. And I think they're good ones. There are a laundry list of other good and worthwhile government mandates. There are also a whole slog of counter-productive government mandates. But listening to Mrs. Palin's unqualified opposition to them reminded me of the lunacy I witnessed at that college republicans meeting.
Now, it's certainly possible that she does believe there are some government mandates that have value, but she should have said that, and made her point of opposition specific to government health care.
So, either she's a lunatic on the level of a person the person who thinks they are a poached egg; or she didn't take the few moments necessary to think through the implications of the talking point she crafted and repeated over and over again at this particular bus stop.
Either way, I'm blown away.
No comments:
Post a Comment