Bacon's Rebellion

Idea Envy

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by

James A. Bacon
in

The supposed shortcomings of Virginia Republicans, their ideas and their agenda, have been meticulously chronicled by bloggers of all stripes. Democrats appear to exist merely as an appendage to moderate Republicans who occasionally thwart their more conservative brethren.

Virginia Centrist and Commonwealth Commonsense are asking where the new ideas and the intellectual vigor are in the Democratic Party of Virginia. It’s a good question. Something beats nothing every time and no one really knows what Democrats stand for, except a visceral distaste for the GOP.

Perhaps it will take getting close enough to “taste” a majority in the House of Delegates for Democrats to stand on a reasonably concrete platform of ideas.

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  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Good question. I suppose the reason we don’t see the Dems deconstructed and analyzed like the GOP is that the Dems ideas, if they have any, are largely irrelevant these days.

    Yes, Mark Warner is a popular Democrat, but in the arena of Virginia democracy (the General Assembly), Democrats have been largely reduced to observers of the process.

    Eventually, the Democrats will begin pushing some innovative ideas when they realize that it’s imperative for their survival. At that point, the Dems will be at the beginning of the long road back to relevancy in Virginia.

    And heck, Virginia will be healthier with two viable political parties. As much as I’d like to see the GOP take control of everything in this state, I can see the benefit of having a strong opposition party.

    I guess. 🙂

    JB
    Commonwealth Conservative

  2. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    Looks to Greens and Libertarians for innovative ideas, look to Democrats and Republicans to continue to denigrate them.

  3. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    Scott:

    Done and Done.

  4. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    For me, most of the good ideas are coming out of the center. Take the GOP’s obsession with privatization/the free market and combine it with traditional government programs, and I think you’ve got a good mix. Take Welfare Reform, for example.

    For the record, I think most government programs are worth saving, and I applaud liberals for doing that work. But they need other ideas as well!

  5. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    It seems to me that one reason the Dems are not deconstructed and analyzed is that their ideas, direction, and base is so diverse that you would firt have to construct somrething to deconstruct. Their weakness is in their attemps at inclusion.

    The Pubs on the other hand are so single minded and dogmatic that they leave themselves open to ridicule, and they fail to achieve their true strength by missing th point of their own dogma. for example the pubs are pro-business but theyinsist on saddling business with the unbearable weight of health care just because it presently has some strong business interests.

    The idea of charging everyone full cost for their decisions is gret in theory, but we are not economically smart enough to do it, and we probably won’t like (or agree on) the results. Sometimes the public interest requires public programs funded at public cost without regard to who benefits the most. Roads and health care are two examples.

    People seem to forget that publicly funded health care does not mean that private healthcare is not available. Likewise, adequate roads do not preclude balanced communities.

    The greens and libertarians are two sources of ideas, but not the only ones. The best sources of ideas come from places that are not clouded with dogma. E = mc^^2.

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