How's That Republi-CON Alternate Reality Workin Out For Ya

UPDATE:  Even The Great Lecherer has been forced to admit, "conservatives in general got in the habit of talking to themselves. . . they in a sense got isolated into their own little world. . . we believed that the other side was kidding themselves, it turned out in fact in the real world – this is a part of what makes politics so fascinating – it turned out in the real world we were kidding ourselves."  

Read Salon, "In the real world we were kidding ourselves". 

"Here it seems to me is the core problem: the big winners under the American fiscal system are the elderly, the rural, and the affluent—Republican constituencies. It's not easy to balance the budget or shrink government spending to any significant degree in ways that don't pinch Republican voters much harder than they pinch Democratic voters.

To escape that reality, some conservative thought leaders have constructed an alternative reality. In this alternative reality, 'welfare' not Medicare is the number one social spending cost.

In this alternative reality, government employment has not fallen by more than 500,000 since 2008.

In this alternative reality, half the country is deemed not to pay any tax—because this alternative reality refuses to count payroll taxes, excise taxes, and state and local taxes as taxes.

In this alternative reality, Medicare is counted as a program that is 'paid for' by its beneficiaries contributions while unemployment insurance is not—even though the latter statement would be much closer to true.

In this alternative reality, we are in imminent danger of losing our freedom—even though, as a matter of daily experience, more Americans of all races and both sexes face fewer legal constraints upon their ability to live as they please than ever before in the nation's history.

Inside this alternative reality, conservative thought leaders have substituted culture war for normal politics. They have succeeded only in isolating themselves from the country in which they live. Conservative politics and the Republican Party are on the wrong track."

Read Claremont Institute, Upon Further Review, A CRB discussion of Political Extremism.

"[I]t’s foolishness that the Republican Party has yoked itself to, and that requires it to make heroically absurd policy assumptions. Even Ryan’s budget can’t credibly argue that Medicare and Social Security spending won’t grow as a percentage of the economy. Both increase under the path he’s laid out. And so he instead argues that Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will fall by half in the coming decades, which is not possible unless we are going to throw many millions of people out of those programs. Even less likely than that, he says that everything that isn’t health-care spending or Social Security will fall by about 75 percent. These aren’t reasonable assumptions, of course, but they’re also not popular ones. In order to protect seniors, he’s gutted everything else in the budget."

Read the Washington Post, How the aging of America is hurting the Republican Party.