Posted on 04/21/2006 11:58:30 AM PDT by neverdem
Our View: Keep the House Republican
Posted Apr 21, 2006
In Frank Capra’s oft-watched movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the character George Bailey is given a chance to see what his hometown would be like had he never lived. He quickly learns it’s an ugly place.
Lucky for Bailey, the transformation of his fictional town was just a trick played on him by an angel.
Conservatives cannot count on a similar twist in this year’s elections, which will take place in the real world. If they succumb to the temptation to write off the Republican Congress, sitting on their hands this November, forsaking the opportunity to contribute to and work for Republican campaigns, or neglecting to go out and vote on election day, they could come out of their stupor next year to discover that Capitol Hill, without a Republican majority, has become a land of nightmares.
For starters, the wildly left-wing Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.) would replace the solidly conservative Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.) as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Sensenbrenner deserves credit for his diligent work to protect our homeland. Not only did he secure renewal of the Patriot Act over Democratic objections and a howling liberal press, but he also won passage of a tough border security and immigration enforcement bill that would crack down on scofflaw employers of illegal aliens while building 700 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
It is not Sensenbrenner’s fault, or the fault of House Republicans who rallied behind him, that President Bush and leading members of the Republican Senate—including presidential hopeful John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.)—won’t agree to the Republican House’s border-security measures unless they get an illegal-alien amnesty, too.
But if conservatives turn their back on the Republican Congress over immigration, the hottest debates next January won’t be over how to secure our border, they will be over how far Judiciary Chairman Conyers can get with his impeachment inquiry. Conyers has already introduced a resolution calling for such an inquiry and his staff has already published a bogus report about Bush’s “impeachable” offenses.
Look in any direction on Capitol Hill, and you will see that House Republicans have made real efforts to advance a conservative agenda, and that any chance of actually achieving that agenda will vanish if Democrats take over.
As Human Events has frequently noted, one egregious failure of Republican government during the Bush years has been massive increases in spending. But last year, House conservatives in the Republican Study Committee led by Human Events Man of the Year Mike Pence (Ind.), began to turn the tide. After Bush promised to spend the moon and the stars on Hurricane Katrina relief, Pence and the RSC conservatives forced the congressional leadership and the President to accept spending cuts—including cuts in entitlement spending—to offset some of the new spending. If Republicans retain their majority, the RSC conservatives are on a political trajectory to become the new leaders of the legislative branch. But not if Democrats take over.
Besides, President Bush’s worst spending bills—the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare Prescription drug bill—were enacted only after Bush fought for them against congressional conservatives. In his final two years, a lame-duck Bush will not have the power to push around a Republican majority in which conservatives are ascendant. But a Democratic majority may win all sorts of new spending measures from a weakened President who never vetoed a bill even at the height of his power.
As a Democratic majority is enacting those new spending measures, it would also raise the income taxes of every American who pays taxes. They would not even have to vote for a tax increase. All they would need to do is let the Bush tax cuts expire as they are scheduled to do under law.
The Republican House, by contrast, has done a great job on taxes. Not only did it enact the Bush tax cuts in the first place, but it has voted in this Congress to finally kill the death tax. If the Republican House majority gets the chance, it will make all the Bush tax cuts permanent.
The House majority has also done excellent work advancing cultural and social issues and respecting the original meaning of the Constitution. The Republican House twice voted to ban all human cloning. Although the House does not have a say in the confirmation of judges, the Constitution does give Congress the authority to restrict the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts, and the Republican House tried to use that power by passing bills to prevent federal courts from hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance and the Defense of Marriage Act. Again, it was the Senate that failed to ban cloning and failed to restrict the federal courts where they should have been restricted.
The Republican House is not perfect. But it is a far better House than the one the Democrats ran for much of the last century. If it can get a more conservative Senate and White House to work with, history could look back on this House majority as the one that finally set the stage for a true conservative counter-revolution in U.S. government.
Conservatives can work for that in 2008 and beyond—as long as they don’t throw it away in 2006.
Conservatives are going to be facing tough decisions when at the polling station.
Not that tough! Vote to keep the Repubs in power or sacrifice it to the Dims. I, for one, do not wish the latter.
This "Bush will get impeached if the 'Rats win the House" is nonsense. You act like he's already guilty and the Republican House is the only thing standing in between him and impeachment!
Exactly. It would be better to lose the House than the Senate. Though we need a more conservative Republican Senate. Since the House tends to overspend no matter what, it would better to go back to blaming Democrats for that angle. They can't actually increase spending all by themselves anyway.
I'd be glad to. But if that effort fails, then we're back to square one.
It requires 2/3 of the Senate to get an impeachment conviction, and I don't think there's anything close to that.
As for higher taxes, we appear to be headed for that either way, unless we can really reform the party in time. Doing that successfully will likely involve the application a little tough love. Republicans had a chance right after the '04 elections, when they were riding a wave of popularity, to get the tax cuts made permanent. Instead, they lunged right toward Social Security, pushing a plan of dubious benefit that had little popular support. That started the new term off on a very sour note that made it difficult to push any further toward the Republcans' domestic agenda.
Sometimes, a temporary setback is the price that needs to be paid in order to get the lead out.
Not quite. I just remember Conyers and Pelosi well enough to understand that the hard left wants revenge for the impeachment of the first black president, for which you only need a majority of the House. They never forgave Bush for 2000.
I have sung along with a Republican party that refuses to do anything about our invasion by "Illegals" for too long. Twenty years ago, I went to Tijuana and viewed the filth and corruption and said, "Thank God for the United States!"
Ten years later I visited a local flea-mart and cried, "Oh no, Tijuana is here!"
Now, I only have to visit the local mall or see the Mexican-gang grafitti all over town to realize Tijuana is everywhere.
Our emergency rooms, jails and social service offices ar overwhelmed by Illegals.
Politicians bully voters into supporting one of the "Do nothing to secure our borders," parties by declaring that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. Too bad! To me, Illegal Immigration is the number one problem facing our nation! That "We can worry about that after we are returned to power," crowd can stifle. I will vote only for candidates who will vote to stop the invasion. If both candidates are for open borders I will leave that portion of my ballot blank. I've had enough!
Don't worry. Be happy. Bush will NOT be impeached EVEN IF the 'Rats win the House this year.
But I'm just looking for ONE BIG FIGHT at home from Bush before he leaves office. I don't want to regret voting for him twice.
There's a touch of "blame the victim" reasoning in this issue. President Bush and the pubbie leadership are destroying this nation with their immigration policy failure. Yet, if we, the victims, fight back, we are blamed for the mess that ensues.
President Bush and the pubbie leadership are to blame, and if they fail to correct their path, they will be causing the loss of majority status, not us, their victims.
Votes largely fell on party lines
"The first article alleging Clinton lied under oath when he testified before Independent Counsel Ken Starr's grand jury about the details of his extramarital affair with Lewinsky was adopted on a 228-206, largely party-line vote. Only five Democrats voted for that article, and five Republicans against.
"Article II failed 229-205, with many more Republican defections.
"But the GOP majority again prevailed, 221-212, on Article III accusing Clinton of obstructing justice by tampering with witnesses and taking other steps to conceal his affair with Lewinsky."
The Senate convicts with a two thirds vote. The dems would impeach if they had the chance, regardless of the unlikely chance of conviction in the Senate. This is not a loyal opposition. They will do anything for political gain.
It's not a question of loyalty. Attempted impeachment convictions that fail are not likely to work out well for the party bringing the impeachment, politically speaking. It'll make them look shrill and petty in time of war.
A straight party-line vote, which is what this would be, would not make the Dems look good. They need to get a few liberal Republicans onboard (like McCain and Specter) so that they can market themselves as "bipartisan". Without that, nobody but the most diehard Democrats will buy into their game.
They already look like that but it hasn't stopped them from retaining a very high majority of seats. If they gain any then the shrillness and pettiness will have paid off. Never overestimate the intelligence of the voting public.
I can understand their frustration.
You would actually allow Democrats control over our national security and over our men and women in the armed forces in the childlike fantasy that the Democrats would then be immediately be replaced by more-conservative Republicans??
No, I didn't. Check my name. What makes you direct that comment to me?
I used the pronoun,"you", to pose the indicated question collectively to those who hold such views.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.