"Are we going to forgo... providing medical care to millions of seniors and the disabled?"

By GottaLaff

Via the L.A. Times letters to the editor:

Thoughts on a GOP 'tea party'

Re “The ‘tea party’ dance,” Opinion, Feb. 21

I read with interest Jacob Heilbrunn's article on the delicate attempt the GOP is making to recruit "tea party" members with a conservative manifesto, the Mount Vernon statement.

I always find one of the main points both groups make to be incomprehensible: the need for small government. How is it possible for a country of more than 300 million people, with the world's most advanced military and with millions of miles of interstate highways, sewers and interconnected electric grids, to be overseen effectively by a small government?

Are we going to forgo educating children? Scientific research? Policing our streets or putting out fires? Building roads, power plants and providing medical care to millions of seniors and the disabled? Are we going to remove our troops from all corners of the world?

I have no interest in aligning myself with the inchoate rage of the tea party or the GOP, but I would like to know how they really think they can run our county with a small government. I fear they know they can't and are using this simplistic but appealing pitch for cynical political gain.

****

I wonder how many of those implacable foes of government have ever received benefits in the form of Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, farm subsidies, education grants, etc.?

Why can't the Obama administration's message be as clear as this?

Quote Of The Day

If our pundit class had any sense, this meme would now be dead. But they don't. Via Taegan-

"For a bunch of small-government Republicans, these guys built a hell of an empire."

-- An Obama transition team member who worked in the Clinton White House, quoted by the New York Times, "who has now stepped back inside for the first time in eight years."