BCT Editorial – 1/25/06

This page was last updated on January 25, 2006.

Party time; Editorial; Beaver County Times; January 25, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“One reason Republicans regularly clean the clocks of Democrats at election time is that the GOP’s diverse elements can put their differences aside while the Democrats’ interest groups go into a deep funk because they didn’t get their way.”

[RWC] Note the editorial never tries to explain this assertion. If it is true, it is for the following reason. In general, people on the right tend to pull in a common direction. When people on the right disagree, the difference tends to be a matter of degree. For example, conservatives and libertarians both believe in limited government, but libertarians tend to push for more restrictions on government power than conservatives.

The left, on the other hand, is composed of a bunch of disparate groups with divergent socialist goals. For example, when two or more racial/ethnic groups want special treatment relative to the rest of the population, the special treatment can come only at the expense of another group. Therefore, all but one of these groups will be disappointed.

“The reaction of the abortion rights groups NARAL and NOW in regard to the decision by the Democratic powers-that-be in Pennsylvania to back Auditor General Robert P. Casey as their party’s best hope to oust two-term U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the U.S. Senate, illustrates this.

“Jonathon Last, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, notes that NARAL and NOW aren’t happy about the Casey candidacy because he is anti-abortion.

“As a result of that, these two key factions of the Democratic Party could sit out the election, financially and politically.

“If it sounds familiar, it is. The same thing happened to former U.S. Rep. Ron Klink, who also was anti-abortion, when he challenged Santorum in 2000.

“Meanwhile, Republicans usually manage to put aside their differences. Libertarians and Religious Right conservatives, two key elements of the GOP coalition that are as far apart philosophically as possible, hold their noses and vote for the party, not the candidate.”

[RWC] Given that liberals tend to consider conservatives to be racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, I have no idea what positions the editorial author attributes to libertarians and the so-called “religious right.” In the real world, libertarians and the religious right are not “as far apart philosophically as possible.” For that to be possible, one of these parties would need to be on the far left and the other on the far right. In fact, both “groups” are on the right side of the economic, political, and social spectrum. As I noted above, differences on the right tend to be matters of degree, not differences on the core goals.