Posted on 01/20/2015 5:50:12 AM PST by Kaslin
If we can't have a wholly unified Republican Party, can the GOP at least agree on some major issues that are essential to the Republican brand and, more importantly, help to get this country back on the right track?
If we can't come together on some of the basic issues that have always defined us, how do we effectively oppose President Obama's ongoing destructive agenda? How do we sell ourselves in 2016 as not just a plausible but an imperative alternative?
Part of our problem, especially in presidential races, is that too many among us are fearful that if they advocate truly conservative solutions, we'll be scorned by the media, the PC culture, the finger-wagging Democratic Party and the liberal establishment and lose elections. They simply don't believe in the power of our ideas anymore.
As President Obama is set to deliver his latest demagogic State of the Union address, which will launch the next year's worth of partisan warfare, we need to make a decision. Are we going to oppose him -- really oppose his lawlessness and his anti-growth and anti-defense policies? Can't we all agree that Obamacare must be repealed? Are we going to put forth our positive ideas as if we really mean them?
Obama's perverse vision for fundamentally transforming America extends to all policy and cultural platforms -- from foreign policy to domestic policy, including social issues, on which he works with community-organizing groups in the private sector, as well as issuing unconstitutional edicts from his public perch, to advance his "progressive" social vision for America.
Elsewhere on the domestic side, his plot for transformation is also multifaceted and complex. Though he has sometimes paid disingenuous lip service to believing in the free market, his actions betray his words. He offers nothing that evinces any belief in the power of the people to produce absent government superintendence or in rudimentary economic truths such as the fact that people respond positively to incentives and negatively to disincentives.
He views the economy as a fixed pie, with the only variable being how its pieces are distributed. The more he can gouge the "rich" and "upper middle class" and siphon off their wealth to "the middle class" and poor the better he has performed. When he says he wants to improve the lot of the middle class, he doesn't mean that he wants to implement policies that will lead to growth whereby the middle class will thrive; he wants to transfer payments from the wealthier, which he mistakenly claims would improve the relative lot of the less wealthy.
He is imposing his redistribution mania across the board, from his misnamed stimulus bill to health care to extending unemployment benefits and paid pregnancy leave to removing the work requirement from welfare reform to moving more and more people onto government programs, including food stamps. Some of his "innocuous" ideas are completely under the radar, such as his program for the government to subsidize students' after-school snacks and evening dinner, which reportedly feeds some 1 million children now. Where does this money come from?
In the meantime, he is planning ostensibly free community college for all Americans and, in his State of the Union speech, is going to propose another grandiose scheme to hike taxes on the "wealthy," to the tune of $320 billion, by increasing yet again their capital gains tax rates and closing their so-called tax loopholes. With Obama, you get this unmistakable sense that he is not just transferring resources in a misguided sense of compassion for the transferees but relishing in punishing the involuntary transferors.
What's tragically ironic about all this is that despite all Obama's professed concern about the middle class, most of his programs are killing the middle class, and his planned programs would make things even worse. Just this past weekend, Reuters published a sobering piece lamenting that "Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue." Though Obama and his fellow liberals supposedly have good intentions, their policies often produce the exact opposite effect of what they promise. How can he possibly think he is enabling economic growth when he is demonizing the work ethic and glorifying idleness?
Obama simply can't escape from his zero-sum mindset to understand that we have a dynamic economy and that a lowering tide -- caused by a war against the rich, productive, business, entrepreneurship and industry -- sinks more boats and a rising tide lifts all boats.
Republicans, in unison, need to press for a full repeal of Obamacare and otherwise recapture and communicate their belief in the power of an unleashed free market to produce robust economic growth rather than compete with liberals in the phony-compassion department, which is futile. They need to make their compelling case for defending America. And above all, they need to graduate from their apparent fear that articulating conservative ideas would hurt them in the 2016 elections.
We can have vigorous internal debates over the other very important issues, as well, including immigration, but let's prove to the American people we represent a stark contrast from the status quo -- that we are bullish on America and firmly believe that the American people have the resilience and readiness to resurrect themselves from this nightmare.
I see little to worry about. The Democratic Party has relied on affluent, upper-class professionals as its core supporters for the past 20 or 30 years. If they turn on these people, and alienate them, they have nothing. No campaign workers, no Congressional staffers, no candidates, no contributions.
If they really want to commit suicide, and present us with millions of doctors, lawyers, and finance professionals as part of our voting support, who are we to say no?
It is important for us to link our proposals to their big picture outcomes and articulate that link:
Republicans favor a repeal of Obamacare because it will remove the largest obstacle to job creation. Okay, keep the one popular phrase, but repeal the rest. Replace Obamacare with a very brief bill permitting insurers to choose whether they will allow the big babies who stay in college or in Mommy’s basement to avoid growing up and taking responsibility for their own medical care.
Republicans favor enforcing immigration laws to protect jobs. We need some sort of border protection, and the immigration laws on the books were passed by our elected representatives and signed back when we had a real president. Enforcing those laws will keep foreign criminals from taking jobs that would otherwise go to Americans.
Republicans favor the Second Amendment because they support freedom and the rule of law. When seconds count, the police are minutes away and responding at 35 mph. When seconds count, Glock is seconds away and responds at 900 fps or better. Further, undermining the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and other Amendments weakens them all, including protections that even liberals value. A strong Constitution protects all Americans.
How about compromise within the party first. Without compromise unifying doesn’t make sense.
Oh, they mean unify where all the conservatives to the right of Hillary Clinton get de-fanged and ostracized.
I am encouraged at least that David Limbaugh chose not to follow the path of “we must agree as Republicans” and enact some kind of badly needed “immigration reform” because we cannot win [insert election here] without it.
By all means! If Republicans (GOPe and Conservatives alike) had ANYTHING upon which to agree is to echo Cruz’s words “REPEAL EVERY WORD OF IT.”
Kill the ObamaCare disease that will add a trillion or two dollars to our ever-increasing deficit.
Kill the ObamaCare disease that will intrude on every aspect of our lives making them the subject of “subjective evaluation” of one’s lifestyle (except in the case of LGBTQWHATEVER - in that case TABOO!!!! Shame on you).
Leave amnesty alone until you stomp ObamaCare into the mud where it belongs.
EVERY......WORD.......OF.......It!!!!!!
By this point, it should be obvious that for conservatives to agree with the GOP-e and RINOs, would be disastrous for both conservatives and the United States.
Just ignoring the large parts of “the agenda” of the left that the GOP-e at least tacitly endorse, and often fully embrace, there is still a gaping chasm of difference between what Republican liberals and Republican conservatives want.
Pick most any major issue that only Republicans seriously address, and you see the problems.
1) Republican liberals fully endorse a police state, run by the 17 intelligence agencies and the over 100 federal police agencies, as well as the non-police agencies being armed and having their own SWAT teams. They embrace the provisions of the Patriot Act that treat “good” Americans as “the enemy”. And they are so blind or arrogant, they list these things when they lie and say they are “conservatives”. A police state is in NO WAY conservative.
2) Republican liberals fully endorse out of control federal growth and spendthrift spending. While the direction they would give to this grotesque abuse is not entirely the same as that of the socialist leftists, the result is still the same.
3) Republican liberals fully embrace “corporate internationalism”, on a parallel track with the left’s “socialist internationalism”. W. Bush’s efforts to quietly (plausible deniability) “transform America” by implementing the US part of the Plan Puebla Panama, is horrifying by conservative standards, though few were even aware of it. They went so far as to study the implementation of the “Amero” to replace the US Dollar, then angrily denied they had done so.
The end result of this insanity would be the establishment of an anti-democratic multinational bureaucracy to run an “EU of the Americas”, based on the EU.
4) Republican liberals fully embrace the over-broad use of American lives and treasure, in the form of our military, to intervene in disputes with no tangible value to our nation. All told, at any given time, there are likely fewer than half a dozen situations that need or could use American military involvement. To make matters much worse, when are military is used, it is given stupidly restrictive rules under which to operate. They can argue for one or the other, but both together are intolerable.
If Republicans could formulate any kind of message we probably wouldn’t be in the state we are in now - adrift under a Crispin Glover style psychotic presidential pretender.
How hard would it be to lay out messaging to address at least the following:
1) Persistent jobless growth
2) Lack of leadership
3) Rising geostrategic competition
4) Weakening of representative democracy/enlarging of government
5) Unchecked immigration
PS - I use the term ‘persistent jobless growth’ to refer to the phenomenon in which economies exiting recessions demonstrate some economic growth while merely maintaining – or, in some cases, decreasing – their level of employment. (i.e. socialism)
Do we REALLY want to rub elbows with all those undesirables? < /sarc >
Below are Senator Cruz’s ten policy principles he believes the Republican led Congress should pursue in 2016:
•Embrace a big pro-jobs, growth Agenda
•Pursue all means possible to repeal Obamacare
•Secure the border and stop illegal amnesty
•Hold government accountable and rein in judicial activism
•Stop the culture of corruption
•Pass fundamental tax reform, making taxes flatter, simpler, and fairer
•Audit the Federal Reserve
•Pass a strong balanced budget amendment
•Champion school choice and repeal common core
•Deal seriously with the twin threats of ISIL and a nuclear Iran
And I suppose its conservatism that must unify under the banner of the new progressive republiCrats? They can bite my third party ass before that`ll happen!
“Republicans, in unison, need to press for a full repeal of Obamacare and otherwise recapture and communicate their belief in the power of an unleashed free market...”
Well, where has Limbaugh been the last few years? Did he miss all the protests, the marches on Washington, the invasions of townhall meetings (until the cowardly toads just started cancelling them)?
He does not need to be writing this letter to the public. He needs to go to DC and nail this letter to the forehead of about 9/10 of the Republican politicians up there.
“Crispin Glover style psychotic presidential pretender.”
Hey now, don’t slander Crispin Glover by associating him with such a lowlife!
The tea party is a movement not a political party, just so you know
The GOP has convinced me that they aren't afraid to articulate conservative ideas, they simply do not believe in them.
I know, but when I use that term, the values I’m looking for in a candidate to vote for ... are clear.
Re: “They simply don’t believe in the power of our ideas anymore.”
Re: “They need to graduate from their apparent fear that articulating conservative ideas would hurt them in the 2016 elections.”
“Belief” and “Fear” have nothing to do with it.
The GOP leadership, and a solid majority of our GOP Congressmen, reject Conservative ideas because they do not believe in them.
OMG - Crispin and clowns - what could possibly be worse?
Other than King Obama that is...
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