Admirable but inadequate:
the arguments the Republicans should make, but don’t

In the discussion at Hot Air about whether Republican whip Eric Cantor’s more optimistic vote estimates are correct, a commenter writes:

Where’s your fu****g outrage, Cantor? I’m so sick of these bloodless useless bean-counters in the GOP. I want some Paddy Chayefsky outrage, from someone. If not now, when? What will be left after this?

Unfortunately, this is true. As stalwart and as good as the Republicans have been, they have been good only up to a certain point. They lack two crucial qualities. First, as the commenter indicates, they lack moral passion. Second, they seem to lack any larger view of what this bill will mean for the country. Most of the time their warnings about the bill are limited to the standard Republican tropes of increase of taxes, increase of health care costs, increase of size of government. This utilitarian focus makes the bill sound like any other big government entitlement, but worse.

What are the Republicans not speaking about?

• They do not speak about the tyrannical nature of this bill, handing to the government a direct power over citizens that has never existed before.

• They do not speak of the hideous, incomprehensible complexity of it, and how that will demoralize the country and drain our energies.

• They do not speak of how it will literally destroy the private health insurance companies, and then the health care industry itself, by making the provision of health care services and goods so unprofitable that doctors will resign from their practices and health care related businesses will close their doors.

• They do not point out that this bill is a weapon of mass destruction aimed at two unique facets of our country, individual freedom, and the best health care system in the world, with the aim of concentrating all power over health care in the hands of the government.

• Nor do they point out how this bill is designed to transfer wealth from the middle class to the lower class, in pursuance of Obama’s openly stated agenda of economic and racial redistributionism.

• And they do not speak, or at least they don’t speak enough, of the grossly unconstitutional nature of it, and how it will hang up the country in law suits and bitter political contention for years, not to mention massive civil and very likely uncivil disobedience.

• Finally, they do not declare that the unprecedented and unlawful powers this bill gives the government, combined with the unprecedented and unlawful manner in which the bill is being passed, amount to a coup d’etat, an all-out attack on our system of government.

Instead of warning the people about the above consequential dangers, the Republicans keep warning the Democrats—the Democrats!—that by passing this bill they will be shooting themselves in the foot politically. But the question of which party controls Congress next year is trivial, compared to the disaster that is about to overtake our country.

The Republicans are good men, but their moral imagination and their understanding of the deeper principles of politics are limited. They do not grasp the destructive, tyrannical purpose of the left—or, if they do grasp it, they are afraid to speak of it, out of fear that it will make them sound extreme. If there was ever a time not to worry about sounding extreme, this is it.

- end of initial entry -

March 20, 8:30 a.m.

Andrew McCarthy writes:

I wish there were something to diasagree with here, Larry, but alas …

The social compact is being broken. It doesn’t get more basic than that.

Texanne writes:

“Bloodless … ”

It could be that in order to survive in Washington, they are all on anti-depressants. I wonder if the whole scene would change if they were allowed to smoke instead!

LA replies:

That’s funny.

Anne writes:

No one has said it better. Thank you.

Jed W. writes:

The cliche about the evil and stupid parties is absolutely true.

March 21, 1:30 a.m.

Roger writes:

This is one of the best things you’ve written, Larry! It is exactly the way I feel about, for want of a better phrase, establishment Republicans. Their only argument a utilitarian one? Reagan was attacked for lacking depth intellectually but actually he saw the true nature of things and would have been the first to emphasize the tyrannical control this bill will bring, which is far more important and significant than number crunching.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2010 12:40 AM | Send