The astroturf creeps onto Washington D.C. After months of deriding legitimate opposition to the government-run health care proposals floating around in Congress, the ruling Democrat Party sitting behind the castle walls of Washington D.C. got a glimpse at the country’s popular will: no more big government. Yesterday, the Tea Party Express, a collection of activists that oppose the current administration’s incessant march towards socialism ranging from conservatives to libertarians to constitutionalists, held a protest rally in the capital. At the same time, we have the President traveling around the country trying to shore up support for his government takeover plans, saying that it will not ruin the free market, that senior care will not suffer, and every other lie and misleading argument he has made about his plans. The question is: which message will triumph?

People across the nation are torn between whether they should support the president’s government health care plans or to oppose them. The problem is that, at the moment, the Democrats have essentially convinced the majority of Americans that they are the only ones with a plan and the Republicans are simply naysayers. This leads moderates to err on the side of action rather than inaction, especially since they know what the costs of inaction are: eventual bankruptcy of our current system and ever more expensive health care. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between know the stakes, but not everyone is clear on the costs of the Democrats’ proposals. To put it succinctly, the cost is higher taxes AND, most importantly, the end of competition and innovation in health care. The current system we have now is a trade-off between quantity and quality: free markets sacrifice some quantity for quality and government care would sacrifice much quality for quantity. For those with health care, the vast majority, the quality of care is very high. The quantity part is that we do not insure a certain percentage of the population, a percentage that does not have health insurance for reasons ranging from not qualifying for government help to reasons such as refusing health insurance because they are wealthy enough to afford care. Democrats right now are proposing a system that will focus solely on quantity, nothing in Obama’s speeches clearly explains how we will retain the high degree of quality that we currently enjoy. Equally important is the question: should we offer health care to all or should we simply make the system more “fair?” I think that most Americans would prefer the latter, which brings me back to the “marketing” problem that we face.

The Democrats right now enjoy the reputation of being the party of health care and it is something that they deserve, not because of the quality of their ideas, but rather due to the quantity of ideas that they put forth every year. These ideas have one thing in common, more government spending and more government control of health care. The reality is that the conservative side has come up with ideas as well, many of them that target the excessive costs of the current system and how to reduce them. There are many things at the moment that can reduce cost, only one of which the president has addressed (albeit halfheartedly), and these cost reductions would not drain the taxpayers’ wallets. The problem is that the Republican Party has done a very poor job of explaining and “marketing” their ideas to the general populace. The only thing that is stopping the current regime from simply passing a socialized health care system is the fact that Americans are traditionally averse to government intervention in their lives and higher taxes (we fought a revolution over both). What needs to be done is to market the ideas from the Republican camp so that the population can weigh each one and determine what would be in the best interest of the country. Obama would have us do something different. Obama would have us accept his program with some compromise over the minor points. That’s what he calls bipartisanship. If that is the choice, then I would rather go bankrupt at the current pace than accelerate it by adding more government programs, more taxes, and more spending of taxpayer dollars. It is undemocratic to simply present one plan and then claim that not compromising on that one plan is “obstructionist” when there are more plans out there. Instead of simply taking Obama’s word for it, that his plan is the best, shouldn’t the American public know what their choices are? This blame falls only on the Republicans and on that fact that they are content with simply exploiting the anti-government sentiment that is sweeping the country instead of strongly marketing a real, practical solution to the problems we face with health care, problems partly caused by government intrusion already.

This is why the Tea Party protests that have been popping up around the country since April are not partisan. They reject both parties for their inaction and for their corruption. Republicans cannot prove themselves, once again, to be a party of opportunity and instead cast themselves as a party of action on these issues that currently affect us. To their credit, Democrats are a party of action when it comes to domestic issues, but it is an action that leads to government control and inflated bureaucracies. We need representatives out there that will take action to bring America back to its first principles, the ones that you may have heard of before: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the Republican Party does not do this, then conservatives and libertarians will splinter off and form a third party… giving the Democratic(-Socialist) Party of America a permanent majority for decades to come.

-AG