Do you remember this?
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." --Ronald Reagan
Or this?
My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. --Grover Norquist
Or this?
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. --Ayn Rand
Hang out with any conservatives, listen to any right wing talk radio programs, read anyone from George Will to Sean Hannity to Newt Gingrich, and it won't take you too long to hear them use the phrase "party of ideas" when referring to the GOP. What they mean by that phrase is illustrated in the quotes above. It is the once-extremist idea that private enterprise is always more efficient, always better and always more preferable to public institutions. Conservatives have been echoing this philosophy for so many decades that no amount of objective evidence - from the failure of the war in Iraq, to the failure of the government's response to Katrina, to the prospect of millions of children going without health care - will shake them of the rightness of this philosophy.
The private-enterprise good/public institutions bad meme floats through all levels of conservative institutions, encompassing individuals as diverse as intellectuals like Ayn Rand and Milton Freedman to comedians like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. It is the glue that binds this movement. When all else fails, at the end of the day conservatives can all agree that private institutions are better and should replace any public institution regardless of the cost or consequences.
Recently, however, reality has poked some pretty effective holes in this argument. Iraq - specifically the dubious nature of private mercenaries like Blackwater and the questionable billing practices of companies like Haliburton - has made a good number of folks sit back and wonder about whether "privatizing" our armed forces was such a good idea. Katrina woke people up to the need for government intervention to help its citizens in a time of catastrophic events. And the disastrous state of affairs in our health care system - where practically everyone has a story about either themselves or someone in their family not getting the help they need because something wasn't covered or they couldn't afford the extra expense of care - has made the deductive argument that government has a role beyond simply providing for national defense and building roads.
All of us who think of ourselves as progressives are at a point right now where we can take back the title of "party of ideas" from the GOP. There is no bigger idea than one that holds that viable public institutions and government intervention can, indeed, not only help real people but they may actually be better solutions than those found in the private sector.
But we can't do it if we deride one of our own for choosing to use a public institution to help finance his election campaign.
As flawed as it is, public campaign financing is no less flawed than running campaigns without it and literally turning our democracy into one big "money primary". Just as you should be able to choose whether to use state-sponsored health care or private insurers, a candidate should be able to choose whether or not public campaign financing is preferable given his or her specific circumstances. To deride that choice, to declare the "end of the campaign" simply because a candidate chooses to utilize a public institution, flies in the face of everything that progressives should stand for.
Kos asked for consistency, and with respect, I think I'm giving him a barrel full.