Posted on 08/21/2011 7:28:47 PM PDT by MontaniSemperLiberi
TO MANY liberals, Rick Perry’s audacious pledge to make Washington as “inconsequential in your life as I can’’ is tantamount to a pledge to bring back the Dark Ages.
Commenting on Twitter as the Texas governor announced his presidential candidacy, longtime Washington journalist Howard Kurtz wondered: “Perry wants to make DC ‘inconsequential in your life.’ Does that include Medicare, Soc Sec, vets’ programs, air safety, FDA?’’ Former Bobby Kennedy aide Jeff Greenfield ran through a litany of Washington’s contributions to American life - from railroads, interstate highways, and the Hoover Dam to land-grant colleges, civil rights, and subsidized mortgages - and marveled at the depth of the right’s “disdain for all things Washington.’’
But it isn’t highways or veterans’ programs or minority voting rights that conservatives find so objectionable about Washington. When Perry speaks of making the nation’s capital “inconsequential,’’ he isn’t proposing to dismantle the Hoover Dam. Hard as it may be for liberals to accept, the Republican base isn’t motivated by blind loathing of the federal government, or by a nihilistic urge to wipe out the good that Washington has accomplished.
What conservatives believe, rather, is what America’s Founders believed: that government is best which governs least, and that human freedom and dignity are likeliest to thrive not when power is centralized and remote, but when it is diffuse, local, and modest.
“It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected,’’ wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1821.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Libertarian Jacoby is right.
Just as most citizens think about their city government infrequently and usually when the citizen initiates the contact, so ought the Fed govt be.
Is he Libertarian? I didn’t know that. Libertarians bug me when they go off the rails with their if-a-15-year-old-girl-wants-to-walk-the-street-to-support-her-crack-additiction-then-that’s-her-right philosophy.
Nice article to come out of Boston. Gee...I didn’t know NE Yankees attached to the media even understood this any longer. There are plenty of FReepers that are NE Yankees that understand this better than most.
Perry Ping.....
Ping for reading tomorrow with coffee.
SS, Medicare, Vet’s programs, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and a million other subsidies...creating more people sitting in the wagon and fewer pulling the wagon is the surest way to S&P downgrades.
I liked what Perry said about health care:"
"the best way for the federal government to improve healthcare is to stimulate job creation so more Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health plans. Creating jobs will also reduce the strain on public safety net programs like Medicaid, saving taxpayer dollars."
If elected, he promised to repeal Obamacare calling it "a misguided, unconstitutional and unsustainable government takeover of our health care that will undermine patient quality, increase red tape and send costs skyrocketing for taxpayers, patients and healthcare providers."
I have not heard many of the other GOP Candidates talk specifically about what they'd do like Rick Perry is doing.
Look at the House Republicans, which really upsets me, they have not done ONE thing to defund obamacare. We gave them the majority to do that...and it has not been done. In 2012, we'll need new leadership in both the house and the senate.
Amen to that!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.