. . . to win an election but lose its own ideology.
Ezra Klein points to the contradiction between this video
and the alternative GOP budget. He mocks the lack of message discipline but my criticism is much deeper. What exactly is the long term plan here? Suppose you win the mid-terms based on an appeal to preserving Medicare. What then?
The GOP has made smaller government and lower taxes the cornerstone of its platform. Yet, we all know that government will grow and taxes will rise if Medicare continues in its current form.
Doesn’t this type of advertising undermine the basic goals of your own party? Doesn’t it push the GOP vision for America further away? Why do this?
Perhaps they have in mind a grand tilt, where the GOP moves away from being a party of small government and simply a party of conservative social values no matter what your fiscal beliefs are.
Modeled Behavior 
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Thursday ~ September 10th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
TGGP
They didn’t just make a commercial defending Medicare, they greatly expanded it under GWB. And have they ever actually shrunk the government? It may be a party whose supporters cite “social values” as a reason to support it, but they haven’t delivered on that either. Does anybody think Roe is going to be overturned? Ronald Reagan even signed off on no-fault divorce! What the Republican party is really about has nothing to do with small government or traditional mores.
Friday ~ September 11th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Publius
The answer to the question ‘why’ is fairly obvious to me: they want power. The people in the party want power. Principles and policies are useful insofar as they provide that power. Much like the EMH, this model of behavior is imperfect, but still explains behavior better than anything else.
Saturday ~ September 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
MattJ
As a past Republican voter, fiscal conservative, and current tea party attendee, I’ll just say that the Republicans have already lost fiscal conservatives. I think the two major parties are in a lot of trouble, as the elections since 92 have provided plenty of evidence for those who are paying attention that neither has any intention of acting on their proclaimed principles.
Monday ~ September 21st, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Blissex
«The GOP has made smaller government and lower taxes the cornerstone of its platform. Yet, we all know that government will grow and taxes will rise if Medicare continues in its current form.»
The Republicans are a PR group that is funded to deliver business profit enhancing government policies. To do so they must get elected, and their strategy to do so, well described by Grover Norquist, they get votes from a number of a single-issue constituencies; it does not matter much which ones, as long as those issues do not conflict with the aims of the funders of the party, and business interests get a majority in Congress.
Controlling Congress is worth hundreds of billions a year in actual cash and opportunity costs to business interests.
The Republicans have no ideology other than protecting the interests of their sponsors; if big government benefits the poor and the working classes, they are against it, if even bigger government benefits businessmen they are for it. They are against tax-and-spend because it is about taxing businesses, but they are in favour of borrow-and-spend because it is about borrowing money to boost business profits. Bailing out homeowners might bail out nobodies, and they are against it, but trillions to the banks will boost business profits and bonuses, and they are for it.
Then they are then in favour of any business-unrelated single-issue advocacy that is prepared to lend their votes to supporting business friendly policies; the NRA guys, the social conservatives, the glibertarians, …; the Republicans will talk any talk as long the walk is the business interest walk. Whatever it takes to win.