5/26/2014

VA Scandal Is Living Study on Big Government Bureaucracies

"For the lesson of the V.H.A.'s success story -- that a government agency can deliver better care at lower cost than the private sector -- runs completely counter to the pro-privatization, anti-government conventional wisdom that dominates today's Washington."- Paul Krugman, liberal economist, idiot.

Sometimes I wonder if the conservative/ libertarians are actually a minority in the Republican Party. Seriously, what is it that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner really believe in? Is winning elections, beating the Democrats, all they really care about? Do they even have a philosophy?

Apparently they do not, and just in case they do, that philosophy surely isn't small government conservatism, because if it were, if they really understood that the administrative state was out of control and had become the "fourth branch of government", if they really understood that government bureaucracies are always less efficient and effective than the private sector, if they really believed that, then they would stop with the politics of associating the VA scandal with Democrats, and instead focus on the fact that the VA is socialized medicine in it's purest form and is therefore evidence that socialized medicine does not work too well.

You see, when President Obama and the Democrats point out that the VA has always been a disaster, instead of stating that he made it worse, the GOP should agree. Yes that's right. Instead of going for the short term political gain, they should be pointing out that he is correct, that regardless of who runs the government agency, a government agency can never deliver anything, especially something as important as health care, as good and as efficient as the private sector. If anything should kill Obamacare and the idea for single payer, it should be the VA scandal.

But the Republicans in Washington do not seem to think this way. No, they are too worried about winning their next election. It's almost as if the conservative philosophy is a second language to them.

The irony of all of this is that they actually have it wrong. Just as being a good teammate in a team sport leads to great individual accomplishment, thinking big picture/long term, in this instance, will actually benefit them in the short term.They think they are acting in a way that will help them win in November, but they could not be more wrong. This is a majority conservative country just waiting for true conservatism, and when it does not appear, conservatives stay home.

I guess it's hard to think like a conservative though, when you are not one.