House of Eratosthenes

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed on Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.
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Here is the resolution’s list:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

If I was running for office — hah right, fat chance. Anyway, I’d be at nine outta ten. It is a satisfactory intersection between the issues that concern us in the here-and-now, and my own platform. So the seventy-percent test seems fair, to me.

I wonder how Scozzafava woulda done.

Update: I would have appreciated some elaboration on Point #1. Maybe splitting it in two. Whoever wants to call himself a conservative in 2010, should be spirited in launching a devastating attack upon the various wealth-distribution schemes. There needs to be an emphasis on the damage that takes place on the natural-market forces when assets are forcibly taken away from one and given to another. There also has to be a sense of conviction that Keynesian economic theory is not only invalid, but has been repeatedly tested and failed each time. That we are permanently done with it.

Neal Boortz has a great quote about this today. The author is Dr. Adrian Rogers.

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. [emphasis mine]

Go in to 2010 standing up for that guy. The guy that must work to earn without receiving. Let the liberals appeal to their base, let them wail away that you’re slavishly playing into the interests of a bunch of rich pansy whiners. Let them go ahead with that.

Just stick to that one sentence up there, the one bolded. Whatever is given to someone who didn’t earn it, must have been plundered away from someone who did. And who loses when that happens? We all do. Rich, poor, anyone in-between.

You know what else has to be in the document? Something about reality. Name-calling. Stop championing one policy over another policy by coming up with a bunch of school-playground names for people who happen to favor the other policy.

To drone on at length about how liberals want energy, labor and prices to be artificially more expensive…how they’re guilty-white-racists pushing bad policies in some sick search of personal redemption…how they’re out to bring down the free market system…that’s all fair. The next few steps beyond it go into ad hominem, and that’s too far. Leave that to them. They’re very practiced at it and they don’t have anything else.

I think they should support no deficits, only surpluses. Otherwise, there will be no way to pay off that mountain of debt except to default.
- pdwalker | 11/23/2009 @ 22:03
I guess I’m still a Republican: 8/10. Maybe 9/10, if Number Five is clarified. “Amnesty” is pretty tricky, innit? To me paying a fine, all back taxes owed (if any), registering with the INS, passing a background check and going to the end of the line for naturalization isn’t amnesty. But I don’t think that’s the generally accepted view in GOP circles.

Other than that? The list looks like a no-brainer to me.
- bpenni | 11/23/2009 @ 22:34
Oh and pd; there is another way out of that debt besides default: massive inflation. Coming to a neighborhood near you! Soon!
- bpenni | 11/23/2009 @ 22:36
Good one, Paul.

Buck, your position on the illegals is more reasonable than I would’ve thought. Of course, we’ll still disagree somewhat so long as you presume each one out of all these millions of refugees happens to legitimately own whatever identity that individual has claimed. When you’ve got eight-digits’ worth of people all doing the same thing, to me it’s an unlikely thing that they’re all doing it for the same reason. Think you might be letting your guard down on that one.

Regarding the list itself, you know what we all seem to have forgotten, double-dog-dammit…is judicial activism. I’m sure we could inflate it up to twenty items if we tried, and some tangential items will have to be left in the dust for the sake of natural emulsification…but J.A. is a legitimate electoral issue that deals with implementation of the Constitution itself, and a discussion about it cannot be “springboarded” off of any discussion of any other.
- mkfreeberg | 11/24/2009 @ 06:53
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

See, from what I’ve been reading, Progressives are all about “equality”. They don’t specify the level at things will be equalized.

And of course, as in all socialist societies, those in power “deserve” more equality than those not in power.

One thing it is definitely NOT about is “Hope”. In a socialist society, the only hope for bettering your situation is to get into the political elite — the ruling class. All other avenues are by definition, closed to you. Socialism kills hope.

Incentive suffers. Production lags. and everyone gets poorer.

That’s not hope. That’s a recipe for despair.
- philmon | 11/24/2009 @ 07:52
I’m with you at 9 of 10.
- thebastidge | 11/24/2009 @ 10:41
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Purity ResolutionMonday, November 23rd, 2009

Purity Resolution
Monday, November 23rd, 2009