Sure, George Bush is not a great President. He's a social conservative and the Republican party is full of social conservative. But, the Republican party is also full of fiscal conservatives, which the Democrats most assuredly are not. Republicans haven't really shown any fiscal conservatism under Bush, but at least their first instinct is towards a free market and smaller government.
Kevin Drum is a Democrat. He's not the really wacky far left-wing Democrat, but he's a Democrat nonetheless and he's further left than any Republican. Over the course of this week, he has 3 posts that remind me why I will never join the Democratic party.
The first is basically a link to another left wing site where an anti-liberal screed was written about Democrats/liberals not really doing anything about the poor in the public schools. To his credit, Drum seems to readily agree with the screed. But, reading the comments, I find that the leftist response is the same as Bush would do, attack the attacker, rather than look inward and take criticism. Also, their aggregate solution is the same tried and true way to run the schools into the ground; more money, more teachers and less vouchers and charter schools. This is the Democratic position on schools and I completely disagree.
The second post is a response to a post on MaxSpeak, designed to figure out how left-wing you are; if you're in the pro-growth progressive camp or the really left wing socialism-type camp. Basically it came with four components; scale, strategy, how to address income inequality and full employment vs. Balancing the budget. Scale basically boiled down to massive new government programs and strategy wasn't really worrisome. Then there was how to address income inequality, this is where I have to jump off the ship. The government should only provide equality of opportunity not equality of outcomes. The fact that the Democratic party does not subscribe to this thought, I'm not really interested in having them in charge of the country. Income inequality is not a problem whatsoever, it's not a zero sum game. Bill Gates is not robbing the poor to become rich, he's creating value for everyone (he's only an example, not necessarily that Microsoft products are the greatest). The US is richer as a whole because of his work. Addressing equality of outcomes should not be in anyone's agenda.
The third post is basically a call to arms for Democratic candidates to unilaterally support universal healthcare (UHC). I, of course, view UHC as a disaster waiting to happen for many reasons, but the main one is it would be a massive expansion of a government that doesn't really do many services very well. My healthcare should be a private matter, not one for the state to be involved with.
So, in short, the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal, has done the opposite of its intended goal; to sway someone to being a Democrat. I find Drum to be a pretty moderate Democrat and the above are stances of a moderate Democrat. I don't really want any of these stances to become policy, therefore, I could never want Democrats to be in charge. Unfortunately, Republicans right now are no great shakes either. What we need is a valid third and fourth party that I called for in this post. These two extra parties can help to moderate the debate between big government conservatives and big government liberals. These parties are going to be around long before I become a Democrat.
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