Star Parker: GOP Needs Tough Love, Not Abandonment

World Net Daily ^ | October 14, 2006 | Star Parker

[Paul Ross]

GOP needs tough love, not abandonment

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By Star Parker, World Net Daily, October 14, 2006

A survey just released by the Pew Center shows that 51 percent of Democrats are enthusiastic about voting in 2006 as opposed to 33 percent of Republicans. This is almost a mirror image of what the picture looked like in 1994.

A Pew Center poll also shows a precipitous drop in support for Republicans and the Bush administration among white evangelicals. It's now a little over 50 percent, whereas in 2004 it was closer to 75 percent.

Given the realities staring us in the face, none of this is a surprise. I know that these polls reflect the facts accurately just from reading my mail.

Republicans and conservatives are fed up with their party and their representatives. But can it be that anything is better than what we now have?

I've gotten letters telling me that I've sold out, because I've written that we should not abandon the Republican Party because at least there is a chance of fixing it. What do we gain by allowing Democrats, who are wrong on everything, to regain power, just to express anger at wayward Republicans?

I'm as mad as everyone else. In fact, I think I've been madder – and mad longer – than everyone else.

I've been arguing for years that although the current administration pays lip service to traditional values, it has missed the central point that limited government is the other side of the same coin as traditional values.

Big government and a moral, traditional and genuinely free society simply cannot go together. It's worth remembering the observation of British historian Lord Acton that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The correlation between the amount of power that we put in the hands of politicians and the tendency of those politicians to become corrupt is a human reality, not a partisan one. We can expect it from Republicans as well as Democrats.

Given the failure of the current Republican regime to limit government and to actually find reasons to grow it, what we're seeing today should come as no surprise.

Nevertheless, I still will argue that we shouldn't take our eye off the ball. Conservatives need to stay focused on what we, and all Americans, need – traditional values and limited government – and continue to push positively toward this end. Despair is no answer and will only make things work.

With all the comparisons to 1994, it shouldn't be forgotten that Republicans ran in 1994 on a positive agenda – the Contract with America. Americans voted for something in '94.

I'm adding nothing new to point out that there is no Democratic agenda in 2006. There are only Democrats looking for power and trying to grab it by taking advantage of Republican incompetence. Unfortunately, not a challenge.

We ought to think back further than 1994 and go back to 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected president. There are a lot of similarities between what is happening now and the picture then.

The country was still traumatized by the aftermath of the Vietnam War, by having a president resign as result of the Watergate scandal, and what was then called the "energy crisis."

Carter was elected to bring fresh air to Washington. He sold himself as a man of the people who would bring decency back to Washington. Fed up Americans voted for him in hope that he would indeed bring back the fresh air that they wanted to breathe.

Unfortunately, like all so-called populists, what Carter really believed in was government and not people. To deal with our energy problems, he created a new Department of Energy. To deal with our education problems, he created a new Department of Education.

Four years later, we had double-digit inflation, 20 percent interest rates, a doubling of energy prices and Americans held hostage in Iran.

The country had to go through even greater trauma than it was in before the 1976 election to open the door for the Reagan era four years later.

Do we have to go through this again? Is the only path to electing Republicans who really believe in traditional values and limited government to throw out the current rascals, lock, stock and barrel, and elect Democrats who will show us how bad things really can get?

There is no question that current Republican leadership has lowered the bar, but let's not forgot just how free this country is. We ultimately get the leadership that we want and are willing to tolerate.

I think conservatives let our elected Republican officials off too easy these past years by tolerating an excessive growth of government that itself was symptomatic that there was a problem.

The answer is to get refocused, clarify our principles and fix the party.

The question is if we'll have to do it sitting on the sidelines while the Democrats turn what is bad into what is worse.

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[doberville]

I'm sorry. I cannot see the logic. Thow out the Republicans and get. . .DEMOCRATS?

This is what you want?

[MNJohnnie]

It's Pew, when you poll 45% D to 33% R it is easy to generate those sorts of slanted numbers

[Blood of Tyrants]

No, I don't want to lose control of Congress to the 'Rats, but the GOP hasn't done a hell of a lot to make me proud lately.

[Nav_Mom]

If the Dems do win in Nov, wont they try to stack the courts (again) as well as provide a pathway for illegal Mexicans to vote?
For every so called "right wing" voter don't the Dems have an Illegal waiting in the wings? This concerns me a lot.

[Nav_Mom]

I agree
It just doesn't make sense to me to allow Left wing Secular Progressive Democrats to win as a way to teach RINOs a lesson.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face..
yikes!

[gcruse]

When did the democrats ever need illegals to skew elections? I'm thinking Chicago here....

[Nav_Mom]

I'll take judicial confirmations & tax cuts for now Thank you very much........The Democrats will strip us of even those victories.

[SaxxonWoods]

"How many of those schemes have been rolled back since 2000? I'd say none. How many have experienced decreased funding? I'd say none."

They got 40 years, and we get 6. You have so little patience. I remember my father saying there was no use in making any more money one year in the 60's, as he had hit the 91% income tax bracket! That's right, he got to keep 9 cents out of each dollar he made after reaching a certain income level. Reagan lowered that rate from 72% to 49%, if memory serves, and Bush and CO got it down to 39.6%. Repubs also lowered the Capital Gains Tax rate from 29% to 15%. They also put stock dividends under that same tax structure, saving retirees and investors a lot of money.

The death tax exemption has gone from $600,000 to 2 million, and the death tax goes away in 2010. But like the income tax and cap gains taxes, all must be extended by Congress soon or they will go back where they were. You think that will happen with Dems in power?

It takes time to undo 40 years of Socialism and Great Society hogwash, especially when Dems still hold many seats in Congress. How about giving us a little more time before you turn the clock back again?

Bush also got two conservative Supreme Court Judges who will make a difference for up to 30 years on the Court. Bush may get a shot at 1-3 more. If Dems take the Senate, no more conservatives will make it on the Court until those Dems are back out of power.

That's just the beginning, my FRiend, just the beginning of the damage Dems will do to this country. In fact, sometimes just a holding action is preferable to losing big, which is what will happen if Dems get in power.

Never let the Perfect become the enemy of the Good.

[Paul Ross]

I was born in a country that I like just fine. I served with pride when my time came and I feel lucky to have lived here when our congress was a body of mostly respectable people who put the country above personal ambition. I am saddened to see it has become such a polluted and disgusting game of con men and extortion artists willing to sell us all down the river for another term and another few years of lining their pockets at our expense.

Bump! You said it for all of us.

[sauropod]

Defund Big Bird!!!

"If PBS won't do it, who will? Who would want to?"

[sauropod]

Me also. But the Bushbot crowd will brook no dissent.

[Nav_Mom]

LOL
The democrats need all the cheating they can get...
By the way are you in the camp that believes the Liberal democrats should win to teach the RINO republicans a lesson?

[gcruse]

If you're asking me should Senator Arlen Specter win his next election, or you're asking me if I'd like to see another attempt to appoint Harriet Meier to the Supreme Court, or if you're asking me if I'm in favor of crippling the border fence legislation in a late night, last minute calumny, I'd have to say, "I'm thinking it over."

[Nav_Mom]

What does that mean? "I'm thinking it over"
Still deciding if you're going to pout or not?
A Democrat win would accomplish what exactly?
You'd feel better while Pelosi ran the senate?
(scratching head)

[gcruse]

If I decline to vote for big government I'm pouting?
Maybe, if I were not a libertarian. We aren't all bots, mom.

[gcruse]

Oh, FYI, I don't think Pelosi will be running the senate no matter how people vote.

[RobbyS]

Star for president., or at least for congress.

[Paul Ross]

With the recent so-called desertion from the White House by their Faith Based Initiative Director, David Crow, calling for a "fast from politics" by Christians... I have a strengthening suspicion that the whole demoralization of the Christian Right...is being engineered...and orchestrated...from the White House itself.

They are finally cutting themselves loose from the crowd that has saved their bacon time, and time again. But now as lame ducks, they just want to push a rather different agenda.

Crow is the smoking gun. The timing of the book, the negative aspersions attributed to Rove and Card et. al., suggest this was no accident... If Crow was sincere, he knows you don't have an easier fight after such a fast and you conceded the shooting match to the enemy.

The reported sanguinity of the White House, both Rove and Bush [alluded to by Colson, and Frank Barnes as well this morning] tends to fit in with the supposition that they really rather would see the RATs control Congress than continue to be constrained by conservatives.

Hello, Illegal Alien Amnesty, Law of the Sea Treaty, defunding Defense still further and implementing North American Union!

GLOBALONEY, HO! Full-speed ahead!!!

We must especially save the NON-RINOs. If I'm right...we must go all-out to save all conservatives as best we can against this unacknowledged back-stabbing duplicity.

[Paul Ross]

Where I trust the GOP candidate to vote as a conservative American first and not a party hack Republican first, they will have my vote.

I urge you to have a little balance there. Purity is likely not going to be seen. But if they really appear to want to embrace conservatism (unlike the RINOs) we can still work with most of the sincere ones. The Senate is where the biggest hypocrites of all are of course, with Specter and McCain just being the tip of the iceberg. There are many others...a good example of the OBL being the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, running for re-election in 2006:

He has been instrumental in the White House strategy of avoiding Congressional oversight of the SPP, the NAU, the LOST, Amnesty for Illegal Aliens under the Euphemism, Guest Workers, and much more.

Here he is meeting with one of the Hollywood OBL advocates, Angelina Jolie:

[Nav_Mom]

If you don't think Pelosi will be running the senate, then you are lacking in political knowledge.
PELOSI will be next in line to be Majority Speaker..
If the Democrats win the Majority, who do you think will be the new Leader??
P E L O S I ............Duh