Posted on 10/14/2005 2:44:07 PM PDT by Frank T
What on earth has happened to Republicans in Washington? Twenty years ago, we conservatives could only dream of an opportunity like the one our elected representatives are now squandering: a Republican President with majorities in both houses of Congress, and two chances to nominate constitutionalists to the Supreme Court. For reasons we can't begin to explain, the Republican Party is in the midst of an identity crisis. Indeed, with each passing week, they behave more like the Democrats we elected them to displace. From education to prescription drugs to transportation to hurricane indemnity, today's Beltway Republicans can't seem to stop redistributing our money. Nor can they seem to embrace the idea that elections have consequences; that we elected them not only to protect the homeland, but to reign in spending and restore the primacy of our Constitution. Republican Revolution? What revolution? If this is our party in power, we'd be better off as a principled minority.
To be fair, we regularly applaud the President and the GOP for their staunch stand against Jihadistan, their timely tax cuts, their support of faith-based social services and traditional values, and their attempts to reform Social Security, among other things.
But there are far too many offsets. Under President Bush, non-defense (and non-homeland security) spending has soared by $303 billion.
Since 2001, spending on regulation has grown at over twice the rate of the economy, rising by 41 percent. Agency personnel increases have grown by 46 percent. Homeland Security accounts for some of these figures, but the SEC and EPA, not traditional Republican favorites, have benefited most. Regulatory spending per year saw 2.2- and 3.2-percent jumps under Presidents Reagan and Clinton, respectively, but during Mr. Bush's tenure, increases have averaged a whopping 6.5 percent. At this rate, conservatives will soon be longing for those laissez-faire Clinton years.
Note to the American small businessman: Of the 4,083 regulations now in the legislative pipeline, 789 target you.
The recent $286.5-billion highway bill contained no fewer than 6,371 "earmarks" -- literally, gifts of taxpayer money to voters back home. More than anything else, its passage was a profile in collective cowardice: Only eight members of the House and 11 senators voted against this legislative abomination.
Modest proposals to cut the rate of Medicare and Medicaid growth were dropped. Even promised cuts to wasteful federal education "programs," to Amtrak and to public broadcasting, quietly disappeared. In all, discretionary, entitlement and interest spending for FY2006 will exceed $2.5 trillion.
Last month, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher displayed that there's still a conservative movement on Capitol Hill. "Some of us came here to reduce the size of government after the model of Ronald Reagan," he said. To which then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay replied, "[A]fter 11 years of Republican majority, we've pared it down pretty good." Congressman DeLay, if an increase of more than a trillion dollars is "pretty good," how would you define "bad"?
But as egregious as pork barrel spending is, it isn't responsible for the fiscal crisis we face. The ever-expanding largesse of federal entitlement programs -- government do-gooding ad nauseam -- actually threatens the solvency of the Republic.
Social Security faces collapse in just a few decades. According to the 2005 report of the Social Security actuaries, the entitlement's unfunded liability is $11.1 trillion in perpetuity. That's "trillion" with a "T." To his credit, President Bush has sought to reform the big-government enrichment scheme known as Social Security, though without success to date or much hope in the near future.
When compared to Medicare, however, Social Security's liabilities are a mere pittance. Medicare's total unfunded liability is $68.1 trillion in perpetuity. (If you're not appalled by this number, you're not alone; precious few humans can comprehend the immensity of one billion, much less sixty-eight thousand billions.) And the program could go belly up in just a few years. To lend further perspective to our misplaced Social Security angst, the total indebtedness of the recently enacted (but unfunded) prescription drug benefit accounts for $18.2 trillion -- more than one and a half times the entire Social Security liability. Summing up, never let anyone tell you that you're getting free drugs from Uncle Sam. Your grandchildren will most certainly be paying for them.
The President's historic refusal to veto any legislation is further evidence of the low priority he places on fiscal discipline and constitutional limits on government. One has to go back 37 presidents and 180 years to find the last chief executive -- John Quincy Adams, 1825 to 1829 -- who served a full term without a single veto. Even George H.W. Bush -- a moderate -- vetoed 29 bills during his single term in office.
Of course, the White House's excuse is that it's difficult to veto one's own party's bills. But this just doesn't wash. Franklin D. Roosevelt vetoed 372 bills from Democrat-controlled Congresses; John F. Kennedy, 12 bills; Lyndon Johnson, 16 bills; and Jimmy Carter, 13 bills. The sad and maddening truth is that party loyalty, political "considerations" and quid pro quos are far more pressing priorities than is constitutional government in Washington today.
The President's "compassionate conservatism" certainly seems to come with a stiff price tag. We're still waiting to hear how enacting ever more unconstitutional laws and untenable entitlements constitutes either compassion or conservatism.
When President Bush recently spoke in New Orleans, he resolved, "We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better." Of course, "higher and better" would be under the mind-numbing and expensive bureaucracy that is federal control. "Americans have never left our destiny to the whims of nature," he continued, "and we will not start now."
While we applaud our President for his heartfelt and moving rhetoric, we would remind our fellow Patriots that there is a just God who presides not only over the destiny of nations, but over the wind, the waves and the whims of nature as well. For the time being, then, let us focus on rebuilding constitutional fealty, and let us insist that our nation's destiny not be left to the whims of a wasteful federal government.
More and more, it looks like Bush43 is on his own. If he's counting on Ed Gillespie and his wife to get his message out for his agenda, there's not much hope for it.
One thing I take exception with is Alexander stating it's better to be the principled minority than the current party in power. Since conservatism *can* win elections, it's better to be the principled majority. Not the "pragmatic" or "incremental" majority that too many RINOs seem to want.
With all the RINOS in the Senate I am hardly inclined to think conservatives have "a majority in both houses."
Yeah, only 80% of Republicans still support him. He's on the ropes.
Yes, Mark seems to be confusing "Republican" with "conservative".
A well written piece. Here's hoping somebody on The Hill is listening.
And fewer than 80% of the people who called themselves Republicans a few years ago still do. He's got a shrinking majority of a shrinking minority.
I've been voting Constitution Party since 1994. It's just frustrating how many people still think the Republican party is going to be something other than Democrats Lite. Same direction, just in a lower gear.
But what percentage of the population identifies themselves as "Republican" compared to last November?
Mistaking conservatism for fealty to (R) might be a costly mistake, IMHO. Sort of like mistaking brains for a bull market.
Congratulations on being irrelevant to the political process for over a decade.
You tell me.
And Republicans won by what margins?
It's called ever larger even less efficient govt.
Or, socialism.
What the hell is wrong with so many that they'd rather let the govt take care of them then do for themselves?
I just heard a Forrester commercial [GOP Senate NJ candidate] say he was pro-choice and always was pro-choice. The GOP as a pro-life party is in Moynihan's words 'boob bait for the bubbas'.
That's because their strategy is to keep peeling off liberals from the insane communist demorats. Conservatives are about to find themselves marginalized on the right the way the communists are on the left and we're going to have ourselves a nice fat dumb happy one party system.
Oh my God, I just figured out the strategy. It all makes sense now...
The only way we can salvage the situation is if we create a new party on the right, but I don't know if it's possible to get a real party off the ground, any more than it's possible to amend the constitution. Dark days ahead. A chill wind is blowing. A chill wind.
George Bush wasn't elected by conservatives to advance the Right's agenda. He was elected by globalists to disarm it. I'm convinced of it.
Socialism IS the right word, and many totally disgusted real conservatives I know are saying "that's NOT what I voted for". We won't make the same mistake again.
Part of what has happened is that the Dem'crat "opposition" does not provide a true constrast to the political dialogue any more, because on most questions that come up, there is both a shared range of views, and areas between that have a shifting point of agreement. What is evolving is a Republican "party" that is really becoming two parties, and the Dem'crats are becoming irrelevant.
Something like this has happened in American history before, when the Whigs simply petered out, and the remnants formed the nucleus of the Republican party. In the dominance that the Republicans held from about the time of the Civil War until shortly before the Great War, a similar fissure occurred, which gave rise to the Progressive Republicans, the "RINO's" or their day. Finally, the Progressives severed their ties with the Republicans altogether, with the rise of the Roosevelt dynasty, first Uncle Teddy, then FDR, and cast their lot with the Dem'crats, once the party of rebellion and suppression, but by the 1930's, well on the way to becoming the socialist party they are today. By default, the remaining Republicans became the "conservative" party, and pretty much lived in the wilderness for some five or six decades, before they were were revived by a true conservative visionary, Ronald Reagan. It took over a decade to move the party from seemingly minority status to a real majority, then almost immediately, as if they could not stand prosperity, the edge was lost. The death of the Soviet Union, from its own internal hemorrhages, also spelled the end of most of the ideology that spawned it in the first place, except on the campuses of US universities. Slowly, the Republican majority was reborn, only to undergo the same schism referred to above, in which there is the branch of the believers, and the branch of the accommodationists.
But there really is nobody to accommodate any more. The Dem'crats have grown meaningless, lacking the sense or depth of experience to govern, or to negotiate, or even engage in civil conversation. They have decided to make overtures to like-minded foreigners, but they have become the awkward new kids on the block. Attempts to appease those factions in the world that are openly hostile to the US has left them looking stupid at best and treasonous at worst. Their one last remaining tactic is to be obstructionists, something they could not successfully accomplish without the assistance of the branch of the Republicans who have chosen to be accommodationists.
I don't know. You're the one who brought up the 80% number. I figured you were looking at a poll.
---best post of the day---
Ok... Explain to me why we have the RINOS in the Senate that we do. Why didn't 'you' elect conservatives? What happened? Do we blame you?
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