on low information voters and their Trump support

Reflecting on Hanson’s piece in National Review linked to yesterday, here’s an acknowledgement that Republicans and conservatives have not been very successful in teaching and persuading voters about principles and good governance.

on the strength of support for Trump

Victor Davis Hanson, who is always worth reading and considering, writes about what has engendered the impenetrable support for Donald Trump among many Republican voters. Again, it’s the society we’ve allowed to be created. The question is what might be developed in its place.

GOP health care reform efforts

A standard line these days is that the GOP doesn’t care about the problems with health care, and the prime evidence is that they didn’t do anything about it during their 12 years in control of Congress or 6 years with both Congress and the Presidency. I’ve had that thought and regret.

Ramesh Ponneru at the Corner noted a couple of problems with that notion. First, with the GOP in charge of Congress came the institution of HSA’s, the CHIP program, and new rules for insurance portability. These are pretty important items. The drug benefit has to go here as well. Granted, these are not necessarily things conservatives are excited about, but they fundamentally dismantle the claim that the GOP has done nothing to address the issues related to health care accessibility.

The second problem is that GOP proposals were blocked by Democrats when they didn’t support them. Which is fine. What needs to be accepted is that this is what a political caucus is designed to do, even the GOP caucus, and the story needs to be on the substance, not on rhetoric that falsely distorts how normal political opposition is portrayed.