just a poke in the eye, sorry about that.
yes, i agree, it would be ideal to ensure that people (obviously not just women) having sex were not having children and rampantly abusing social services as a result, but there's also a heavy sympathetic vibe between conservation Republicans and the more fundamentalist religious organizations which includes a desire to not provide birth control services or sex education to anyone (although I'd wager that lower income teens would benefit fairly well from that kind of service?) - and I won't even bother going into the idea of providing abortion services within this context since it's not worth the energy on anyone's part here to argue for or against. but it's still a bit misguided to me in exactly where the GOP should be laying down its support.

cutting off their nose to spite their face etc?
my general supposition is the GOP is just doing anything and everything it can to win support for their up and coming bids for power in the next administration without much regard for what the implications are of their actions, and where these tricky overlaps in ideals exist.

lol at controlling my sex life in this list

They wouldn't in either case, but this is just moralizing. It is neither politics nor policy. The world is full of irresponsible gun owners and children people cannot afford to raise (which may not have been the case when they had them). The question is not whether or not these things SHOULD exist. They do. What does the larger community do about it?

I agree. Liberals have that old saying: "To a conservative life begins at conception and ends at birth". Seems pretty true for the Tea Party crew.

A few things regarding this:

1. It is true that it is far easier to criticize or just say whatever you want when you are out of power. Actually governing is much more difficult, and you may be forced to answer for promises and policies that make no sense.

2. There is a fairly coherent, if sometimes repulsive and often empirically inaccurate, ideology that can justify a lot of these seeming contradictions.

3. The party organization (which will say whatever it needs to say to get its members elected--which is its job, after all--hence the 180 on immigration after 2012) is not always on the same page as the ideological core of its base. And candidates are not always on the same page as either.


When we talk about political parties it is sometimes helpful to break them down into their component parts. There's not really a Republican or Democratic party in the monolithic sense that we often think about it.

There's the party members holding office, whose primary concern is often just to get themselves reelected. This may require honoring ideological commitments of their voters, addressing the needs of donors, or doing what is best for the people of their district even if it flies in the face of ideology (witness the constant about face on federal disaster relief you see with republicans). Ted Cruz may have hurt the national republican party, but he probably greatly expanded his own personal celebrity within the activist base of his party, increased his donor e-mail list, and established himself as a factional leader. even if he hurts the GOP's 2016 presidential chances, or costs the party the senate (even the house) in 2014, he still comes out ahead.

There is the party organization--the professional republican and democrats who mostly just want to see their party do well. This could mean pursuing the plurality strategy of karl rove under bush (there are enough conservatives out there that if we can just rile them up enough to vote we'll win and don't need to appeal to moderate voters), or reaching out to a wider audience when the base isn't robust enough (see republicans and immigration, right now). It may mean looking for more moderate or liberal candidates in some areas and more conservative candidates than others. This is not to downplay ideological commitments too much, but the goal is to win elections.

And then there is the party base. The rank and file voters. They could be motivated by ideology. They could be motivated by the quality of their life (this guy does stuff for me/my district). They could be motivated by partisanship (which is not the same thing as ideology. The tea party is ideological more than it is partisan). And even with ideology that varies from region to region.


Sorry, more unsolicited context than anyone likely cares about

that's a good line. I've always liked 'a liberal is a conservative who has never been mugged.'

tie malice up, fuck her then kill the fetus


winner winner chicken dinner

Social Security disability?

.

As long as it was enough. Politically it would probably be impossible but it would be helpful if these things could be indexed regionally.

The empirical tests for what is needed to live at a standard people would find acceptable (not having to choose between food and medince, paying rent, etc) does not seem like it should be prohibitively difficult to figure out. I agree that some sort of EITC that gets everyone to that level (or a mix of EITC and SS or something) would be preferable to the piecemeal approaches we have now.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

offers a sample standard

It probably is. It's not necessarily a bad thing either. If we've advanced technologically to the point where we can meet people's basic needs, even moderate luxury needs, without having everyone needing to work all the time why not construct a society where people work less and have more time to, you know, live?

.

I really like that that site broke it down by family size. 99% of the time I read living wage literature it only gives a listing for a family of four, and inevitably righties think it's too much and lefties think it's not enough.

Good idea, but there are no more bullets left in my gun. :\

I'm all about the Welfare State, stip. I'd be dead without it.

you shouldn't have made all those poor choices, Harmless

Society will have this talk soon enough. Science is proceeding pretty rapidly at mapping the brain and correlation studies showing relationships between things like IQ and political persuasion with genetics are become more common (something no one dared touch for years after The Bell Curve). At some point it will become apparent what an "optimal" human consists of and the suboptimal will be left to rot eliminating their consumption in what is likely in involuntary manner.

I can't fucking wait.