Working with the master’s tools
Last week, I wrote about the Senate Finance Committee’s welfare bill. Both of the comments that readers posted said, basically, that they don’t think this Congress or this President can do anything right.
These comments made me think about the ways in which I’ve been affected by spending the past 4 years working for this Administration. The biggest impact is that I can’t demonize the other side as much as I might once have. There certainly are Republicans who think all receipt of government benefits is inherently evil and who are willing to sacrifice a generation or two in order to "send a message." But I also know Republicans who sincerely believe that it’s an abdication of responsibility to let people struggle by on meager welfare benefits.
And while I’ve had some pretty discouraging moments lately, my absolute low point in government service was during the Clinton Administration. I discovered that the fact that the President himself said, in front of reporters "welfare reform shouldn’t mean you have to drop out of college" didn’t mean that HHS was going to do a darn thing to make that true. Because Bruce Reed thought that doing anything to promote education would make the Administration look "weak on work."
March 14th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
There certainly are decent people who happen to be republicans. The problem is that the people who dominate the republican party in the house and senate, and the white house, and the national party organization, are extremists and ideologues.
If regular republicans were actually in charge of the party, much as I would disagree with them on lots of issues, I think there would be possibilities and I would not be as concerned.
But not with this particular group of ideologues in power. And Clinton just pandered to the ideologues, rather than actually standing up on principle and fighting the good fight.
It looks like on social security at least the Dems are going to do what they need to do. The problem is that there are just so many issues at stake, and the GOP ideologues are on the warpath on all of them…
April 6th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Speaking as a former conservative GOPer, I agree with Chip here for the most part. The only real difference I have with him is that I actually prefer moderate Republicans. I vote for them most of the time when I have that option. Unfortunately I rarily have that option these days… and when I do I know that they’d be impotent in the face of the extremists and idealogues who control the GOP.
As an aside of sorts… I’ve only voted a straight Dem ballot twice in my life. The first time was in 1990 when Bush 41 was in power. The second was this last November with Bush 43 in power. Under normal circumstances, though… I vote GOP about 2/3 of the time.