A simple, sincere appeal for your opinion... Why should Conservatives stay in the Republican Party?

No, it's situational. IF you mean small c conservatives. There are many different types. Is Rand Paul a conservative? Jeb Bush? John McCain? That's why there isn't a consensus on what a "conservative," in the American political sense, really is. Is cutting taxes if it increases the deficit conservative? Is raising taxes to balance the budget conservative?

And on and on....

 

How do the young and healthy opting out increase healthcare cost? Can you separate health insurance cost and healthcare cost in your mind? Also, I want the young to have an option that allows them to pay little health insurance cost while saving for high healthcare cost should a low percentage issue arise. You seem to want to subsidize the richest demographic, the elderly, with the poorest demographic, the young. I don't understand the logic in this concept.

Here again, you fail to separate healthcare cost and insurance or premium cost. You want the healthy to help pay for the sick, but the healthy do not have high healthcare cost. You want to use a product that separates the consumer from the provider which inflates overall healthcare costs in order to redistribute wealth from the healthy to the sick. This isn't logical. Our goal should be reduced healthcare cost, not reduced health insurance cost. Further, this removes any consequences from poor personal decisions. Study after study shows that the vast majority of health issues come from unhealthy lifestyles. As far as preventative medicine, this is easily rectified. A yearly one time check up is required to maintain your low monthly premium. This is currently common practice. Insurance companies offer this free of charge because it saves them money. After several years of healthy youth years, an HSA could have upwards of 40 to 50k in it. Additionally, the high deductible would put the consumer and provider directly in contact which drives down costs and removes bureaucratic cost.

 

No, they didn't. People keep basing this nonsense on the color of a state, on a map. The VAST majority of that is open, empty space. As far as voters go, more of them chose progressivism. The middle class, did not reject it.

 

absolute nonsense. If 2 people are brought to the hospital with identical conditions, one insured and one not, they both get the exact same treatment. Including drugs and tests. Ability to pay is not a factor.

It makes no difference. By law, they will be treated exactly the same, regardless of ability to pay.

 

Conservatism is an ideology that has yet to meet reality. It fits perfectly with the Republican party.

 

To answer the question in the title: Conservatives should stay in the Republican party because that is where we have the best chance of influencing things. We can't be democrats, the libertarians are loons, and the other parties make the libertarians look sane. The Republican party is the only place that we have a chance at any political power.

 

I missed it. When did individual sovereignty and liberty and limited government control become old hat passe and fall out of favor, just because they are losing battles?

 

But conservatives don't really stand for those things. Individual sovereignty? gay marriage and abortion show this to be false. Limited government? Police state/military show this to be false.

And those are but just 2 examples of why your generation of conservatism is obsolete. Your fiscal ideology is beyond obsolete.

 

We need to make sure that health insurance is affordable and that means making premiums affordable and thats going to be harder to do if young healthy people drop out, that why we need to care about premiums. We also need to care about the overall cost and since Obamacare healthcare as a percentage of the GDP has barely risen when before it was rising rapidly. A lot of that was due to the recession but has shown that Obamacare isn't the problem people think it is.

I am not about redistribution of income from young to old, rather from healthy to sick, and yes the healthy should pitch in, that is the whole point of health insurance and the way that successful systems operate. When you get sick, as long as you are pitching in, the group as a whole will help you pay your massive healthcare bills so getting sick doesn't ruin you. The sick already have massive bills even with insurance and 75% of those who get ruined because of healthcare bills are insured. You now want to shift even more of the costs onto the sick, but this flies in the face of insurance. Getting sick is ruinous enough and can destroy your career, earnings and life and we need to limit the extra healthcare costs it heaps on you, because guess what everyone is going to get sick eventually and its going to suck for you if you have helped build a system that is going to screw you over.

Another problem is that going without insurance means paying unreasonable bills. Hospitals charge rates much high than the actual costs, you have heard about $30 tylenols hopefully, and part of their trick is so they have a high price to negociate with insurance companies. Without insurance you are stuck with crazy high healthcare bills that have nothing to do with the actual cost.

 

I'm sure you already know this, Rob, but the totalitarian socialist reactionaries who refer to themselves by the laughably inappropriate euphemism "progressives" have been the enemies of individual sovereignty, liberty and limited government since they vomited out of the French Revolution.

As for the hilarious claim that conservative views "don't apply in the 21st century, and will never again be a part of any serious policy debate", our delusional friend is overlooking the inconvenient fact that Republicans control the U.S. House, Senate, White House and a majority of state houses and governorships. Not only are conservative views still applicable and part of serious policy debate, they are the views that are winning over those of the totalitarian socialist reactionaries who oppose them.

 

They also push for religious freedom just as long as it's for christians. They want so badly to force the bible on school children.

 

I don't quite agree with this. Libertarianism better fits that statement.

Conservatism has it's place, and function in society.

 

and can not pass a single piece of legislation, lol. You guys OWN government, and are so incompetent you can't do ANYTHING.

reality of course, shows this to be nonsense. which is why you guys can't pass ANYTHING, even though you control all of government at the moment.

 

Optimizing tax rates should be the conservative approach. Using corporate taxes as an example, a top rate of 30% or higher is too high, and a top rate of 20% or lower is too low. If you want to optimize government revenue, without stifling corporate enterprise, then a top rate of about 25% is the optimum.

No liberal will ever be able to conceptualize this basic precept, but conservatives should be able to, and they should be able to espouse it as well.

 

And you think all conservatives are against gay marriage and a woman's right to control her reproductive decisions? That would be sheer ignorance on your part.

Yet, it's your obsolete and failed ideas, policies and candidates that are vanishing from America's political landscape. I suspect that's one reason why the Left has been gripped in a state of mass hysteria since it lost the last vestige of power it had to hang on to in Washington last November - many Leftists sense or realize that you've reached your zenith of political power. That's why the grassroots conservative movement that started rising during the mid-2000s has got you crapping your pants, and despite all your best efforts to stamp it out, it won't go away.

The New Left is heading for the same fate as the Old, and you're already getting a taste of oblivion.

 

That's a lie, guffaw:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?congress=115&status=28,29,32,33

Of course, this doesn't include Trump's executive orders and Neil Gorsuch's elevation to the Supreme Court.

Oh, so now we own the government, i.e., our views are still applicable and part of serious policy debate. Make up your mind, rahl!

Once again, you're lying when you say that we "own government" because there are not 60 Republicans seated in the U.S. Senate. When the GOP has a filibuster-proof majority in that chamber then you can claim we "own government".

The fact that Republicans control the U.S. House, Senate, White House and a majority of state houses and governorships proves that this is true. It's the views of your generation of Leftists that are losing and vanishing from America's political landscape. Buh-bye...

 

I can not think of one reason the conservatives should stay in the Republican party. I think they should leave, run their own candidates, and oppose all republican nominees.

 

Do you have a source for this? Because I can't find anything on Google remotely like this...or are you just paraphrasing through your bias?

You're redefining the word for your own biased benefit.

Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of social reform.[1] As a philosophy, it is based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.​

More right-wing dribble that has been refuted thousands of times and continues as the backbone of alt right propaganda.

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are revolutionaries, NOT progressives. They were more concerned about overturning the status quo of their countries than how to effectively run it afterwards. Fidel originally wasn't even a Marxist, but became one under the influence of his comrade in arms, Che Guevara. Che was the true ideological Marxist, but even he became disillusioned with how the Soviets practiced communism.

There are literally hundreds of books on the topic, that you cannot even understand this is proof of your political ignorance.

 

of course not. But this again just proves my point. Generational conservatism changes.

huh?

Politics is now and always has been a pendulum. Right now, the pendulum swung to the right. You guys keep doing what you are doing, and it will be swinging back to the left by the mid terms.

History clearly shows this to be nonsense.

 

right, no serious legislation.

Your ideas and policies are obsolete. You hold congress, due to Gerry mandering.

You control the legislative, executive and now have a conservative majority on the supreme court.

nope. You hold congressional seats because of Gerry mandering.

 

This spells it out for me well enough although to be honest, with Trump and his tweets and some of the crazy stuff going on I'm feeling that the experiment has gone the way it did for Dr Frankenstein. I had hoped that the frustration that I have with the Dem/GOP establishment would be shared by millions and spark a drive for a 3rd party (legit 3rd party candidates not a nutwad like Johnson) all over congress in 2018, and a legit candidate for POTUS in 2020.

With the way the last 8 months have gone IMO it seems more likely that we see my 3rd party dreams get crushed, but then again its not like congress has won me back over with their partisan antics either so maybe there is hope.

 

uh huh, no dem's hold seats due to gerrymandering, of course not, they are far too principled! /sar

 

Obama care is a poor example, because it can be fixed and it is already law. Obama said that it was a work in progress
and would need adjustments. I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative but realistic, and a Reagan supporter.
Don't know where to go if I abandon the Republicans. I can only hope that the morally corrupt cancer in the Whitehouse dissipates, so
that we can move to traditional republican values, with a qualified Republican to lead us.

 

Both parties have Gerry Mandered. But republicans currently occupy house seats, due to Gerry Mandering. I am all for doing away with Gerry mandering, for both parties.

 

Pay attention to the freak'n sentence.........MIDDLE AMERICA.....since the middle of America (between the coasts) went red it clearly means that the middle class from MIDDLE AMERICA voted against Progressives values. Unless of course you are going to say that most people in MIDDLE AMERICA are poor or wealthy and not middle class, and they all voted for Trump but the middle class didn't. Is that what you are going to go with?