Merge

Conservatives are fleshing out their next generation transportation ideas and Matthew Yglesias suggests that there could be a pretty big area of overlap between the left and right in this particular policy realm:

To my way of thinking an enormous amount of good could be done if
conservatives were more interested in applying really basic free market
principles to transportation policy. For example, why not allow
developers to build as much or as little parking as they want to build
when they launch a new development? Why not charge market rates for
curbside parking on public streets? How about fewer restrictions on the
permitted density of development? Why not reduce congestion on the
most-trafficked roads through market pricing of access?

  • Larry Littlefield

    They should take a clue for Brittain, and endorse the bicycle as the ultimate “conservative” transportation machine.

    (Based on old principles, not recent corrupt practice).

    Total personal responsibility and self reliance, with patriotism throw in. Thrift and conservation of resources. Community benefits with very little government role.

    The recent corrupt practice is expanding the government to redistribute income up, which fits an SUV with a single occupant. They need to get back to basics.

    Fire Skelos!

  • J

    The idea that Republicans are always in favor of free market may simplify the situation too much. The 2nd comment on the Matthew Yglesias is right on. David in Nashville says the following:

    “I think the problem here is that, as embodied politically in the Republican Party, conservatism isn’t about ideas. As William Greider pointed out long ago, the Republican Party isn’t the party of conservative ideas; it’s the party of conservative constituencies. And conservative constituencies love their cars and hate having to pay to use what they’d just as soon have for free. Suburban conservatives are also obsessive about their property values, and convinced that increasing density will damage them. This, I think, accounts for the paradox that it’s lefties who are more free-market on these sorts of issues than the Right is; lefties are disproportionately urban and interested in the quality of urban life. It’s interests, not ideas, that drive the policy preferences.”

  • Larry Littlefield

    “The Republican Party isn’t the party of conservative ideas; it’s the party of conservative constituencies.”

    Thousands of members of those constituencies die every day; thousands of members of other constituencies reach voting age.

    The Republicans not only wrote off much of the United States and future generations by following their principles, worse they wrote off those areas and people by violating them.

    Room for a new second party in a few years?

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