The other day, I had dinner with my Dad. He was in town on business before flying to Israel. He did not say what the business was (updating the will?). We had a drink at the bar (Dad and drinking is a story worth a post someday). He ordered an IPA. I told him that I do not like IPA's. He said that when he had his first, he did not like it, but was told it was an acquired taste. I have always found this to be a curious phrase.
When I don't like something, and I'm told that it is an acquired taste, it occurs to me that one could conceivably acquire a taste for shit, and why would you do that? I do not know what shit tastes like. For all I know, shit could taste like chicken. Why not? Everything else does. I'm not interested in finding out. But if shit tastes like chicken, then when your chicken tastes like shit it is just a tautology.
But I digress. Conservatism must be an acquired taste. I'll explain below the fold.
As I've shown, the whole notion of an acquired taste is that something by its nature gives you an unpleasant experience, but when you get enough unpleasantness, it stops being unpleasant. Indeed, at some point you actually begin to enjoy this thing that you initially found to be revolting.
In American politics, the ideological battle between the left and the right gets a lot of media attention. Most of that attention comes from and goes to the beltway and the pundit class that thinks these conversations are the same ones going on around the country. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Americans always want life to be better. That is the essence of the American Dream. We hold the power to make it better. So when it seems that it is not getting better, we vote for change. That is the swing vote in a nutshell. I'm not happy, you're not an incumbent, I'll vote for you.
But there are a couple of major differences between the wrong and the left that rarely get talked about. The first is that the wrong believes that government is always the problem and can never be a source for good. The left believes that its worth trying to help.
Now, we go back and forth in trying the policies of the wrong and the left. When we try a policy of the wrong and it fails (well, I call them the wrong for a reason), they say that it failed because it wasn't wrong enough. Okay, they actually say that it wasn't conservative enough. However, the left doesn't usually have that problem.
Think about it. Obamacare works. I wrote about it on this very site not too long ago. One poster from a red state said it wasn't working in his state. That was because it wasn't in effect in his state. In other words, wherever Obamacare has been implemented more people are covered, and the only failure is that we could do more good by going further to the left.
There is a commentator on ESPN that uses the catchphrase, "If some is good, more is better." On the left that has been proven to be the case. When Bill Clinton's budget passed without a single Republican vote, they said the tax hike would wreck the economy. Job growth averaged 225,000 per month for 8 years! BTW we also achieved a budget surplus.
Obamacare has been good for the economy, because some people who stayed at there jobs for the health insurance are now free to leave and start their own businesses. Republicans should be celebrating that. The return of the Top Marginal Tax rate to Clinton era levels has not hurt the economy. However, slightly higher taxes and slightly higher spending (We can still borrow at historically low rates) would do so much more.
Paul Krugman once compared the Austerity Policies of the Republican Party to the Medieval Doctor who would bleed you when you were sick, and when you did not get better would bleed you more. Saturday Night Live did a sketch about this in the 70's. "You'll feel better after a good bleeding." "I am bleeding!" Bleeding, apparently, is also an acquired taste.