Posted on 10/10/2006 11:08:32 AM PDT by Small-L
When The Washington Monthly reached me at my office recently, a voice on the other side of the line meekly asked if I would ever consider writing an article supporting the radical proposition that Republicans should get their brains beaten in this fall.
“Count me in!” was my chipper response. I also seem to remember muttering something about preferring an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist Convention to having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook for the next two years.
Maybe that’s because right-wing, knuckle-dragging Republicans like myself took over Congress in 1994 promising to balance the budget and limit Washington’s power. We were a nasty breed and had no problem blaming Bill and Hillary Clinton for everything from the exploding federal deficit to male pattern baldness. I suspected then, as I do now, that Hillary Clinton herself had something to do with “Love, American Style” and “Joanie Loves Chachi.” And why not blame her? Back then, Newt Gingrich felt comfortable blaming the drowning of two little children on Democratic values. Hell. It was 1994. It just seemed like the thing to do.
The terminally rumpled Dick Armey (R-Whiskey Gulch) even went so far as to suggest that the Clintons might be Marxists, drawing an angry personal rebuke from Bubba himself. But 12 years later, it is Armey’s fellow Republicans who should be sobered by the short and ugly history of Republican Supremacy.
Under Bill Clinton’s presidency, discretionary spending grew at a modest rate of 3.4 percent. Not too bad for a Marxist, even considering that his worst instincts were tempered by a Republican Congress. (Well, his worst fiscal instincts.)
But compare Clinton’s 3.4 percent growth rate to the spending orgy that has dominated Washington since Bush moved into town. With Republicans in charge of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, spending growth has averaged 10.4 percent per year. And the GOP’s reckless record goes well beyond runaway defense costs. The federal education bureaucracy has exploded by 101 percent since Republicans started running Congress. Spending in the Justice Department over the same period has shot up 131 percent, the Commerce Department 82 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services 81 percent, the State Department 80 percent, the Department of Transportation 65 percent, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development 59 percent. Incredibly, the four bureaucracies once targeted for elimination by the GOP Congress—Commerce, Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development—have enjoyed spending increases of an average of 85 percent.
It’s enough to make economic conservatives long for the day when Marxists were running the White House.
This must all be shocking to my Republican friends who still believe our country would be a better place if our party controlled every branch of government as well as every news network, movie studio, and mid-American pulpit. But evidence suggests that divided government may be what Washington needs the most.
During the 1990s, conservative Republicans and the Clinton White House somehow managed to balance the budget while winning two wars, reforming welfare, and conducting an awesome impeachment trial focused on oral sex and a stained Gap dress.
The fact that both parties hated each another was healthy for our republic’s bottom line. A Democratic president who hates a Republican appropriations chairman is less likely to sign off on funding for the Midland Maggot Festival being held in the chairman’s home district. Soon, budget negotiations become nasty, brutish, and short and devolve into the legislative equivalent of Detroit, where only the strong survive.
But in Bush’s Washington, the capital is a much clubbier place where everyone in the White House knows someone on the Hill who worked with the Old Man, summered in Maine, or pledged DKE at Yale. The result? Chummy relationships, no vetoes, and record-breaking debts.
As a political junkie who wept bitter tears the night Jimmy Carter got elected and shouted with uncontrolled joy when Ronald Reagan whipped his sorry ass four years later, I find myself ambivalent for the first time over a national election. After six years of Republican recklessness at home and abroad, I seriously doubt Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or the aforementioned Bourbon Street hookers could spend this country any deeper into debt than my Republican Party. With any luck, Democrats will launch destructive investigations, a new era of bad feelings will break out, and George W. Bush will stop using his veto pen to fill in Rangers’ box scores and instead start using it like a conservative president should.
"With any luck, the Democrats will launch destructive investigations..."
Yeah, Joe, that is JUST what the country needs with North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan needing our attention.
Incredibly, the four bureaucracies once targeted for elimination by the GOP Congress—Commerce, Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development—have enjoyed spending increases of an average of 85 percent.
Additionally lets not forget the $1T Medicare Drug Entitlement that our Republican Congress passed, Ted Stevens’s $250-million Bridge to Nowhere, $500K for a Teapot Museum, and the other earmarks that we're paying for.
Please explain how these increases are "Security Spending." Don't forget that some of these increases happened before 9/11.
Frist retired, there will be a New Senate Republican leader in January. Conservatives SHOULD be keeping their eye on that ball NOT having hysterics because not everything is politically perfect for them. NOTHING in life is ever going to be perfect. Make peace with that are be content to sit on the Political Fringes the rest of your lives.
4 Weeks before the election is NOT the time for these inter party hissy fits. This article does ONE thing. Helps elect Democrats. All the rationalizing and self delusion in the world does NOT change that basic fact.
Joe Scarborough has become a prostitute for the lefties who run his network. Do not be fooled that he is in any way a conservative or a Republican any more. He is an opportunist and a sleazeball. Do you ever watch the garbage that his show has become? Most of it is salacious junk interspersed with hits against Bush and his administration. He loves to bring on Bill Mahrer and Al Franken and give them essentially open mikes. Most of his "panels" are stacked with the most strident leftists who usually intimidate the token Republican there. It truly belongs in the trash heap. Stop giving this phony buffoon a soapbox in a conservative leaning newspaper or blog.
The bottom line is that the Republicans are not without their faults, but they are the ONLY alternative to a return to the corruption and treason of the Clinton/Gore/Reno years, and you can bet the rent that will happen if 'Rats get their greasy fingers on to ANY levers of real political power.
Screw Joe Scarborough and his sniping at our President. All Joe and his ilk are doing is using the issue of spending just like you use a club on a seal in the arctic. The fact is, if there is going to be spending (and especially if there is going to be too MUCH spending), America is better served to have Republicans in control of the budget process because Democrats are utterly irresponsible in how they spend the public purse. Republicans are not perfect, but they basically know the priorities of America and try to adhere to them, unlike the 'Rats.
And instead of fixating and wringing hands over the budget-this, and the budget-that, Americans BETTER get it straight in their heads that national security is THE issue, and if we don't win this war of global jihad that has been forced upon us, the budget isn't going to mean a damn thing when you're either swearing allegiance to allah, or having your head chopped off.
The greatest beef I have is in the up and coming POTUS election, that Republicans had best give America a clear choice in idealogies, not 'Democrap lite'.
It's not the Freepers that we need to worry about. You, I and most of the rest of us are going to vote "R", but what about the rest of the country who voted for Bush and the Republicans because they stood for smaller government, constrained spending, local control of schools, reduced entitlement spending... They're the ones who are looking at our record and see no reason to come out to vote. If the Freepers don't work to communicate that message to the RNC and the powers in the party, we'll all suffer. I won't stay home, and I will vote "R", but I'll be holding my nose to do it because I feel like the party has betrayed my trust and my vote.
I will NEVER vote for a democrat! NEVER! WE are at WAR!!!!
If you factor in a president that knows how to veto bills, I wouldn't be so sure.
Unfortunately, the "We're not as bad as the other guys" is a pretty weak platform. MNJohnnie's list is outstanding--why aren't we running on that platform? Why isn't that list on every piece of campaign literature I get in the mail?
It's all about the Supreme Court. Shhhh.... Don't let on.
Boy let not worry about the real issues lets spend all our time having hysterics over minor nonsense instead
So you're a one issue voter? Is that all our party has to campaign on?
I agree that it's the overriding issue, but do we let the big spending/big government/special interest legislators run away with the country while we fight a war that won't be over for 100 years?
Perhaps the Always Angry might try consideirng the logical consequences of their actions here. Maybe your cure, helping elect Democrats, is worse then the disease you claim to fear?
Who got the Federal Spending Data base created so average Citizens will be able to track all Federal Spending on line starting next year?
That right, THIS GOP Congress. Over the fevered objections of all most ALL the Democrats. Be careful what you wish for Donner Party "Conservatives".
1. Liberal judges which will be be appointed by Democrats.
2. Liberal laws on abortion and other life issues under Democrats.
All other issues pale by comparison with these two!
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."
Only Scrooge or Hoover could think this was the most important consideration during war and recession.
It seems that the Rino could be in the eye of the beholder. Is Scarborough a Rino because he criticizes fiscally irresponsible Republicans, or are fiscally irresponsible Republicans the Rinos because they have betrayed the once bedrock principles of the GOP?
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