An Exegetical Take on the GOP's Ideological Divisions

Last week, the TAB published my guest column in which I discussed how the successful or failure of political organizations is highly correlated with the worldviews of their ranking officers.

Though I wish Andy had used my original title “No Organization Can Outrun the Worldview of its Leadership”, I think the title he ended up using was very timely for us Republicans, as Rich Lowry and ConservativeReview.com recently also wrote about the GOP’s ideological divide. We are seeing this ideological divide up close and personal with the debate over how to repeal ObamaCare.

The House GOP’s leadership wanted to vote on a bill on March 23, 2017 because it marked the seventh Anniversary of ObamaCare’s passage. That is why they put so much effort in trying to persuade our Republican Representatives to vote for Paul Ryan’s bill. While I appreciated the effort that Speaker Ryan and his staff put in to put together their bill (The American Health Care Act), I did not and do not support passage of the bill. FreedomWorks[1] reviewed the bill and found that it continues

• ObamaCare’s pre-existing condition requirements,
• ObamaCare’s essential health benefits mandate (Section 1302(b)),
• ObamaCare’s Community Rating Provision
• The Medicaid expansion until 2020
• The advancable, refundable premium tax credit program
• The dependent coverage until age 26 requirement and
• Retains the ObamaCare penalty tax for not having insurance in the form of a “continuous coverage incentive” which is a 30% penalty you pay to your insurer if you go without coverage for 63 or more consecutive days.

I favor a different bill (The ObamaCare Replacement Bill S222, H1072) sponsored by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Representative Mark Sanford [2]. Unlike Paul Ryan’s AHCA Bill, The ObamaCare Replacement Act repeals the following provisions of ObamaCare: Individual and employer mandates, community rating restrictions, rate review, essential health benefits requirement, medical loss ratio, and other insurance mandates. It also

• Equalizes the tax treatment of the purchase of health insurance for individuals and employers
• Expands the use of Health Saving Accounts & eliminates requirement for HSAs to be paired with high deductible health plans
• Amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow a physician a tax deduction equal to the amount such physician would otherwise charge for charity medical care or uncompensated care due to bad debt.
• Establishes Individual and Association Health Pools (IHPs), which allow individuals and small businesses to pool together for the purposes of purchasing insurance
• Allows Insurers the opportunity to sell across state lines
• Eliminates Medicaid Expansion

The Ideological Battle in the GOP can be broken down as follows:

• Those who are content with growing the size, scope and cost of government versus those who want to roll it back to levels proscribed by the limits of the Constitution
• Those who try to manipulate others with appeals to emotion versus those who appeal to people’s cognitive reasoning capabilities
• Those who believe that might makes right versus those who believe that righteousness trumps might
• Those who put their faith in princes versus those who Fear G-d
• Those whose plumblines are based on personalities versus those whose plumblines are based on principles
• Those who believe in government-imposed happiness versus those who believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
• Those who believe in the Magic R versus those who don’t
• Those who believe conservatives are expendable versus those who believe that conservatives and conservatism are the heart, mind and soul of the party
• Those who want to virtue-signal versus those who want to competently serve the public trust
• Those who don’t care about what goes into a bill versus those who care about the quality of a bill’s content

In order to unite the GOP, it cannot resort to #UnityIsStrength posts on social media. Nor can it force people to pledge unquestioning fealty to the party organization, or even a charismatic prince who affixed the Magic R after his name. And it certainly shouldn’t be manipulating people’s emotions with deceitful messaging. What it needs to do to forge a united Republican Party is to cleave to the followed tested and trusted principles:

• G-d’s Law
• The Constitution of these United States and
• Reform-oriented party operating practices that empower the grassroots voter

[1] http://www.freedomworks.org/co...

[2] https://www.paul.senate.gov/im...