Liberal vs. Conservative Semantics
The Quorum Report (see link in sidebar) had a link to a Texas Monthly interview with Speaker Pete Laney: Laney is a conservative Democrat who is retiring. In response to a question about why he didn’t switch to the GOP when many of this colleagues did he said:
“Because there are a lot more people in the Democratic party who do what the Good Book says: Take care of the poor and the afflicted and the downtrodden. I took flak from some of my Republican colleagues for working with the mentally ill, for working with some of the underprivileged from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. That’s not liberal; that’s trying to use the assets of the state to produce the best economics you can. That’s to keep you from getting sick, to take care of the mentally ill so they don’t have to be institutionalized, to try to have an education program that educates people to be good taxpaying citizens rather than uneducated people who end up in our penal system and cost us $25,000 or $35,000 a year to take care of. I think all of those things—education, mental health, things like that—are conservative rather than liberal”
I suspect that for the majority of citizens our real concern is not simply for less government or less taxes but rather to be convinced that we are spending public money as efficiently as possible for our long term welfare. It takes talent and skill for candidates to persuade constituents to support sensible, incremental, pragmatic solutions rather than simplistic extreme ideology.
“Because there are a lot more people in the Democratic party who do what the Good Book says: Take care of the poor and the afflicted and the downtrodden. I took flak from some of my Republican colleagues for working with the mentally ill, for working with some of the underprivileged from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. That’s not liberal; that’s trying to use the assets of the state to produce the best economics you can. That’s to keep you from getting sick, to take care of the mentally ill so they don’t have to be institutionalized, to try to have an education program that educates people to be good taxpaying citizens rather than uneducated people who end up in our penal system and cost us $25,000 or $35,000 a year to take care of. I think all of those things—education, mental health, things like that—are conservative rather than liberal”
I suspect that for the majority of citizens our real concern is not simply for less government or less taxes but rather to be convinced that we are spending public money as efficiently as possible for our long term welfare. It takes talent and skill for candidates to persuade constituents to support sensible, incremental, pragmatic solutions rather than simplistic extreme ideology.
posted by Paul Silver at 11:24 AM
