Tag: democrat

Written by Johnathon Goodenow. Media by Kayla Morton. Primary results are rolling in as the Republican and Democratic parties continue choosing a candidate to run...

I’m amused by the clearly biased. Jim DeMint, former U.S. Senator and soon-to-be president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative “think tank,” really struck my funny bone with his Washington Post article, “Conservative ideas need a new message.” The title sports a statement I can certainly agree with; the conservative GOP really does need a new message if they hope to win over voters in the next round of federal elections. When reading DeMint’s writing, however, I found myself wondering how he thought insistences, like “progressive central planning has failed throughout history and is still failing today,” would win him the ear of informed citizens looking for unbiased alternatives to progressive or liberal ideas. First, “progressive central planning” is misleading. “Central planning,” also known as “economic planning,” is defined as any arrangement or guidance of economic activity outside of the control of our capitalist market. I can almost hear DeMint thinking, “Let’s slap the word progressive on this sucker and make it sound detestable!” Perhaps an unfair sentiment, but I mean, come on—do I really have to bring up FDR’s New Deal to make my point? (Here, conservatives are criticizing his economic interventionism.) Clearly, no matter how one views our current governmental trajectory, economic planning has been a part of our system (as most governmental systems use a combination of free marketing and planning) with winning results for generations. Does DeMint want to see the abolition of the FDA? I didn’t think so. With this in mind, I knew DeMint’s article would be laced with bias, as most political articles are, but I gave it a read anyway, remembering what I perceived to be his central messages: “[c]onservative ideas work,” whereas progressive ideas don’t, and Heritage will demonstrate to citizens how conservative reform is crucial to our government and economy. It was difficult.