Republicans Against George Bush

1. Who are we? We are Americans. We believe in small government, America first, the Constitution, the rule of law, secure borders and competitive capitalism that favor the needs of the average American over the rest of the world.

2. Why are we against President Bush? Chairman of the GOP Gillespie has stated that the GOP does not stand for limited or smaller government and President Bush is acting accordingly. Cutting taxes is a good thing, but not when cutting a single program or entitlement hasn't even been proposed. The opposite is true. New or expanded programs are constantly being proposed by the Bush administration. Since the advent of the Bush administration, government has become a larger and even more intrusive force in our lives. In addition, continued free trade overtures threaten to destroy the economic viability of the average citizen of the United States.

3. What do we want? We want likeminded Americans to vote for the Reform Party candidate for President of the United States and for Republicans in the congressional races? We think that enough people voting for the Reform Party in the presidential election, and doing so publicly AS REPUBLICANS, should cause President Bush to lose. This in turn should create a demand within our party for a President more in line with our principles. If we do this, we must make sure that OUR Republican party hears our message. This makes it twice as important to get every Republican voter that we can get publicly behind this. They must not stay at home for the election. I hope to be able to point to the numbers of people who vote for the Reform Party candidate and tell our Republican leadership that we are the party of small limited government, strong national defense, individual rights, a rule of law and sound economic policies.

4. Do we mean for the Reform Party candidate to win? This is not a goal of this group. We want to create a public demand for a small government GOP without leaving the party.

5. Does this mean that we approve of Dean or any of the other Democratic nominees? No! We explicitly reject the Socialist /Democrat party and think that their actions are causing the decline of this great nation. It is because our beloved GOP is becoming indistinguishable from the Democrats in other than foreign relations arenas that we are undertaking this action.

6. Are there any up-sides to this action in the 2004 election? It is likely that there are many Republicans that are disillusioned with the current administration and Jim Gillespie’s leadership. The likely result is that many will stay home. This could cost us seats and/or control of the House or Senate. If enough people turn out to register this protest vote, we could increase our majority.

7. Do we have any specific long term goals? If President Bush loses due to our efforts, it is our hope that our party leadership will enact a platform more in line with our traditional Republican principles. The next candidate should also be more concerned with sound domestic policies.

8. How many people would it take to accomplish our objective? According to recent election results, a few thousand in just a few states could change the result of a presidential election.

9. What happens if we do not succeed? If Bush wins in 2004, after eight years of growing government and spending, the average Republican will be dispirited and stay away from the polls just like what happened to his father. Also, the people will be tired of a war on terrorism that can’t end and the strength of foreign policy will not sustain the next candidate either. (Remember; “Its the economy stupid” ?) Facing increasing debt, a lack of meaningful employment, and a dispirited/divided Republican Party, Hillary/Bayh will likely be elected. Strengthened by eight years in opposition, the Democrats will be united and will show up to the polls for Hillary/Bayh. To those who claim that it can't happen, I would refer you to those of us who said Bill would never get elected or reelected and those who said that New York would never elect Hillary. Does it still seem so far fetched? How many Republicans have you met who are really excited about the direction of Bush's domestic policy?

10. What’s in it for R.A.G. BUSH? When we pledge allegiance to the “Republic”, we do so not to any politician or party, but rather to the republican system of limited government set up in the Constitution. We consider socialism and tyranny in all of its forms an enemy to be conquered and not one to compromise with. We get to do something to try to keep freedoms lamp lit in America. We want our children to know the greatness of the United States, not experience its decline. Enough people talk about all the things that are wrong, let’s do something. In 2008, we want to help elect a strong Republican president who stands for the things that we value and who will face the ineptitude of one of the eight candidates that are currently contesting the Democratic nomination. We have faith in our fellow Americans. If our purpose is righteous and Americans united, who can stand in our way?

"This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path." Reagan (1964)

Second Thoughts on Free Trade

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

New York Times
January 06, 2004
Charles Schumer, Paul Craig Roberts
Charles Schumer is the senior senator from New York. Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy in the Reagan administration.

"I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect free trade not only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person could not doubt but almost as a part of the moral law," wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1933. And indeed, to this day, nothing gets an economist's blood boiling more quickly than a challenge to the doctrine of free trade.
Yet in that essay of 70 years ago, Keynes himself was beginning to question some of the assumptions supporting free trade. The question today is whether the case for free trade made two centuries ago is undermined by the changes now evident in the modern global economy.

Two recent examples illustrate this concern. Over the next three years, a major New York securities firm plans to replace its team of 800 American software engineers, who each earns about $150,000 per year, with an equally competent team in India earning an average of only $20,000. Second, within five years the number of radiologists in this country is expected to decline significantly because M.R.I. data can be sent over the Internet to Asian radiologists capable of diagnosing the problem at a small fraction of the cost.

These anecdotes suggest a seismic shift in the world economy brought on by three major developments. First, new political stability is allowing capital and technology to flow far more freely around the world. Second, strong educational systems are producing tens of millions of intelligent, motivated workers in the developing world, particularly in India and China, who are as capable as the most highly educated workers in the developed world but available to work at a tiny fraction of the cost. Last, inexpensive, high-bandwidth communications make it feasible for large work forces to be located and effectively managed anywhere.

We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level — from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations, often with American roots, that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.

Most economists want to view these changes through the classic prism of "free trade," and they label any challenge as protectionism. But these new developments call into question some of the key assumptions supporting the doctrine of free trade.

The case for free trade is based on the British economist David Ricardo's principle of "comparative advantage" — the idea that each nation should specialize in what it does best and trade with others for other needs. If each country focused on its comparative advantage, productivity would be highest and every nation would share part of a bigger global economic pie.

However, when Ricardo said that free trade would produce shared gains for all nations, he assumed that the resources used to produce goods — what he called the "factors of production" — would not be easily moved over international borders. Comparative advantage is undermined if the factors of production can relocate to wherever they are most productive: in today's case, to a relatively few countries with abundant cheap labor. In this situation, there are no longer shared gains — some countries win and others lose.

When Ricardo proposed his theory in the early 1800's, major factors of production — soil, climate, geography and even most workers — could not be moved to other countries. But today's vital factors of production — capital, technology and ideas — can be moved around the world at the push of a button. They are as easy to export as cars.

This is a very different world than Ricardo envisioned. When American companies replace domestic employees with lower-cost foreign workers in order to sell more cheaply in home markets, it seems hard to argue that this is the way free trade is supposed to work. To call this a "jobless recovery" is inaccurate: lots of new jobs are being created, just not here in the United States.

In the past, we have supported free trade policies. But if the case for free trade is undermined by changes in the global economy, our policies should reflect the new realities. While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining effort for laid-off workers, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas. Likewise, we do not believe that offering tax incentives to companies that keep American jobs at home can compensate for the enormous wage differentials driving jobs offshore.

America's trade agreements need to to reflect the new reality. The first step is to begin an honest debate about where our economy really is and where we are headed as a nation. Old-fashioned protectionist measures are not the answer, but the new era will demand new thinking and new solutions. And one thing is certain: real and effective solutions will emerge only when economists and policymakers end the confusion between the free flow of goods and the free flow of factors of production.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

"RINOS and neo-cons..."

Ah, you've betrayed yourself, my friend. Another paleo- fringe battle. Nobody cares about "neo-conservatives" except the "Patsies."

But this is what it's all about. These Bush-Bashing fests on FreeRepublic have little to do with ideology, and certainly not "true conservatism" (unless you're talking about a narrow band of pseudo conservatism). It's all about Pat Buchanan's upset over the fact that Bill Kristol has greater access to the White House than he does. It's all about the fury that the paleos- have over the fact that they were never able to get one of their own nominated to the Presidency, and as soon as a genuine conservative was elected in 1980, his success was due largely to the support of the newly emerging neo-conservatives! This probably explains why Buchanan is such an defender of the Arab world...he can't abide all of those newbie conservative Jews over at COMMENTARY who succeeded in achieving in one election what the paleos- couldn't achieve a century.

Qustion: How significant are the paleo-conservatives in the American political landscape? Answer: How many votes did Pat Buchanan get in 2000?

From FOX NEWS: "Conservatives Riled Over Bush Activities"

“Our Republican Party is not conservative no matter what they say when they go home,” Don Devine, vice-chairman of the American Conservative Union (search), said of the attendees at the convention. “The fact is, [the administration is] not going in the right direction and we have to do something about it.”

Many of the activists who have worked hand-in-glove with the Bush administration say the agenda lacks the social and fiscal conservative principles they’ve been fighting to expand. Many complain that Bush has forsaken his base of support in order to make deals with Democrats.

They point to the numbers that show that Bush has overseen a growth in non-defense domestic discretionary spending of 8.2 percent over the last four years – an increase not matched since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society (search) budget boom in the 1960s.

Fiscal conservatives are also stunned at the Republican leadership's role in helping to pass the 10-year, $400 billion Medicare bill, signed by the president late last year. Opponents say the bill is loaded with goodies for pharmaceutical and insurance industries and will put the country further into debt.

“I’m concerned about this strategy of buying off the opposition,” said National Right to Work Foundation (search) President Mark Mix, who spoke at a panel entitled “Fiscal Outrage: Stop the Spending!”

Conservatives are also concerned about the president's proposal, announced earlier this month, to grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants working in the United States, and say the expansion of government has taken a toll on efforts to protect privacy.

Conservatives who bend toward the libertarian aspects of democratic rule said they were rankled by the Patriot Act (search), particularly the broadened domestic surveillance powers, as well as increased scrutiny of airline passengers using personal information to run security checks on fliers.

“The conservative movement was about limiting the scope of government. We have not seen that in the first four years of the Bush administration,” said former Clinton administration FBI agent Gary Aldrich, who spoke with Devine on a panel called “GOP Success: Is it Hurting the Conservative Movement?”

Kay Daly, a conservative activist and talk radio host, said she has heard many of the complaints, and they have gotten louder over the last year.

But, she said she thinks Bush “has taken care of his base” through the recent recess appointment of Judge Charles Pickering (search) to the federal appeals bench, and the enactment of the partial birth abortion bill in 2003, for example.

However, Daly warned that Bush shouldn’t push conservatives by ignoring their concerns. “Bush has got to watch out ... or [conservatives] may stay home” on election night, she said.

Conservative activists insist that they are not flaks for the GOP, but a separate movement altogether, and one that is looking for kindred spirits in the White House and Congress.

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