The idea that Republican voters sometimes/often vote against
their own interests is a Democrat talking point, and was the subject of a New York Times podcast that was
discussed in a National Review online article by senior writer David French
recently. The podcast host, Times
managing editor Michael Barbaro, interviewed domestic-affairs correspondent
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who cited the situation in the state of Kentucky, one of
the states that suffered mightily when the War on Coal put enough people out of
work to run Kentucky’s coal jobs to their lowest level in 118 years.
The out-of-work miners, forced onto Medicaid by the War on
Coal, benefited greatly from Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, Stolberg said,
“yet, its Republican senators are leading the charge for Obamacare repeal,
including for Medicaid reform. How can that be?”
The answer to that question comes from the different ways of
looking at the world and at life from opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Which of the following sets of ideas do you most closely
observe?
1. The nuclear family is an antique idea, traditional ideas
of morality and culture are holding us back, sexual autonomy is a virtue, and we
just can’t get by without government “help.”
2. First, we graduate from high school, get a job to sustain
ourselves, get married, and then have children and raise a family.
If you chose 1, you likely lean toward the political Left;
if you chose 2, you likely lean toward the political Right. These different
views of how to live our lives define why Republicans vote against what seem to
be their interests.
“Now, between the two parties, which one has centered its
appeal around married parents with kids and which party has doubled down on
single moms,” French asks? “Even worse, the Democrats’ far-left base has
intentionally attacked the nuclear family as archaic and patriarchal. It has
celebrated sexual autonomy as a cardinal virtue. Then, when faced with the
fractured families that result, it says, ‘Here, let the government help,’” he
writes.
How does this relate to Kentucky’s Republican Senators? They
are voting on their ideas of what makes America great, and according to French,
those interests “depend on the complex interplay between our faith, our
families, and our communities.” It’s all about core values.
New York Times
columnist David Brooks traces these values back to American frontier towns,
where life was “fragile, perilous, lonely and remorseless,” where a “single
slip could produce disaster,” and as a result the frontier folk learned to
practice “self-restraint, temperance, self-control and strictness of
conscience.”
Those values are at the heart of the American experience of
carving a powerful and free republic out of a wilderness, a nation that has as
a result led the world for decades. They reflect the Biblical values brought
here and cultivated during America’s first turbulent and troubled decades, and
which formed the basis of the government created following the “Colexit” of the
Colonies from Mother England’s repressive grasp.
Republicans, or at least those who are true conservatives,
honor the ideals of freedom, personal responsibility, self-reliance, and
limited government, and to a less-than-perfect degree – but a far-greater
degree than those who call themselves liberals, progressives, or socialists –
try to live by these values.
Kentucky’s Republican Senators dislike the government’s
solution to the problem that the government itself created when it
over-regulated nearly everything, and so they see a vote against maintaining
this absurdity as a virtuous one. They prefer a system freeing Americans to
make their own decisions about healthcare and health insurance without the
one-size-fits-nobody concept that the Democrats created that we commonly call
Obamacare.
Their vote seemingly punishes those they should most want to help: their constituents and supporters. But the bigger picture shows instead the desire to free their constituents from the damaging big government policies that put them on the government dole. The want to create an environment where they can find another job that can sustain them above the poverty line, and off of Medicaid.
Their vote seemingly punishes those they should most want to help: their constituents and supporters. But the bigger picture shows instead the desire to free their constituents from the damaging big government policies that put them on the government dole. The want to create an environment where they can find another job that can sustain them above the poverty line, and off of Medicaid.
Republicans want to do away with this Democrat-created
problem. Their fundamental goal is to free Americans from this horrible, failed
big government mechanism. Its aim was to ultimately create a single-payer,
totally government-controlled healthcare system that would mirror the British
system. You know the one: it recently took control of decisions on seriously
ill infant Charlie Gard’s care away from his parents, and effectively ordered
the Charlie’s death.
That case demonstrates precisely how government-run
healthcare can, and likely will, degenerate into a system where government
makes decisions about who lives and dies. And that
explains why Republicans seem to vote against their constituents’ interests.
