by Rod D. Martin
August 5, 2013

Gosh I hate to agree with the Daily Beast, but this article by Lloyd Green (“How to Beat Hillary: Stop the Republican Fratricide”) is spot-on. First just the math: you have to get to 51 (%, that is), and it takes a coalition to get there.

But second, I never thought I’d see a Republican Party that had issues with keeping the promise of Social Security (though we want to do it better than the Socialist Security model that’s going to leave my generation holding the bag), disaster relief (the most basic form of “common defense”), and veterans’ benefits. Veterans benefits??? If we can’t take proper care of our veterans, we do not deserve our country.

This may offend “libertarian purists”, but I’m sorry: how many votes did the Libertarian Party get last year? That’s how a coalition, an alliance, or even a family works: nobody gets all of what they want, so that everyone can get most of what they want. I have little problem with libertarian economics. I have an enormous problem with the core principle of libertarian thought, that the individual is everything. Part of that problem is that it’s Eve in the Garden. Another part of it is that it makes it nearly impossible to get to 51.

Regardless of how we got here, America has confiscated its citizens retirement savings for 80 years and we owe it back. When our neighbors are living in rubble because of a tornado or earthquake, we should help them. And when we send brave sons and daughters to war, we owe them more than we could ever repay.

The Republican Party used to understand these things, no matter how much it might wish to reform aspects of them. Failing to understand those things now will chase common-sense, non-ideological voters — a great many of whom we used to call Reagan Democrats — into the hands of the socialists. And note well, libertarians: once there, they will take far more from us than the cost of some hurricane relief, or an old lady’s pension. They will take everything.