Thursday, August 09, 2007

The Ruffini Agenda

It looks good, but could use a few tweaks:

Take the War on Terror into Pakistan if necessary. I don’t think Barack Obama is wrong here.

Didn't we already cover this? And where's the plank about defeating Iran and Syria to bring the war to a quick and victorious close?

Any other elements of RomneyCare worth looking at?

More than a few conservatives would say, "Bleep, no!!!"

End all earmarks. Don’t just reform them. Kill them. Dead.

That's great, except that you'd be raising the bar so high as to guarantee that no restored Republican Congress could ever attain it, which would lead quickly and inevitably back to more "culture of corruption" memes and more 2006-style election debacles.

Earmarks are a function of Big Government. As long as Big Government exists, so will earmarks, no matter which party is in the majority. Let's focus on reducing Big Government first, and the earmark problem will diminish accordingly.

Of course, the previous twelve years demonstrated pretty conclusively that the "era of Big Government" never left and never will absent a comprehensive economic collapse - which just happens to be in the moderately near future when the Social Security/Medicare/pensions crunch hits. Until then you can put this entire platform section in mothballs in any realistic, practical sense.