[Victoria Delsoul]

Bush gave us the biggest, most expensive, and most intrusive government in history and like myself and others predicted, eventually the Democrats would inherit that big, expensive, intrusive government.

Is a debatable point, but whatever government excesses we saw under the Bush administration, Obama has already eclipsed and surpassed those excesses in just the nine months he has been in office.

The Heritage Foundation does a good job putting this into perspective:

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending:

President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.

President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.

President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.

President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016. link

The HF has this chart, which was originally posted by the Washington Post, emphasizing the difference between the Bush and Obama budgets deficits.

Furthermore, the HF points out that even though Obama has claimed to have cut the deficit by half, he has already quadrupled the deficit with his bloated stimulus package. And let's not forget, Obama has another stimulus package in the works which will cripple our economy and increase the deficit even more.

The fact is, if we keep on voting for the Republicans as they march to the left, we will keep reinforcing the GOP leadership's belief that moving to the left to chase moderates is the proper way to go.

I mentioned in my previous post that this is why we need reform.  We need conservatives like Sarah Palin to reform the GOP from within and take the party back to its roots and conservative principles. I know that rebuilding a party takes effort, time, courage, and determination.  Forming a third party is a fast, self satisfying approach that doesn't really address the problem, and it tends to be a lost cause come election time.

[af_vet_rr]

We need conservatives like Sarah Palin to reform the GOP from within and take the party back to its roots and conservative principles. I know that rebuilding a party takes effort, time, courage, and determination.

The GOP is not interested in true Conservatives - they've spent the last few decades moving every so slowly to the left, and they've stuck us with moderate candidates and moderate Presidents because that's where the big money ended up - McCain should have been finished in the primaries and was nearly finished at one point. When Hillary pulled out, McCain and the GOP leadership immediately reached out to her followers. That should tell you something - she who was married to the former Scumbag-in-Chief and who wanted to push universal healthcare down our throats in the '90s and all of the sudden the GOP reverses course and thinks her supporters are worth having.

Unless you can come up with the kind of big money that gets the GOP's attention and you force an ultimatum, they are going to continue this trend, and it makes a warped kind of sense, because with enough money you can get the moderates to vote for you. Too many of the big money donors stand to financially benefit from moderate Republicans in Congress and the White House, and true conservatives are a dying breed unfortunately.

Forming a third party is a fast, self satisfying approach that doesn't really address the problem, and it tends to be a lost cause come election time.

It used not be a lost cause in America until the Democrats and Republicans managed to put a stranglehold on politics and convinced the electorate that there should only be two parties and unfortunately we've been dumb enough to believe it ever since.

Even if voting for a third party is considered a lost cause, at least I can say I'm a Conservative 365 days out of the year instead of every day but election day. If the GOP wants to ignore me and people like me, fine, I'm not going to piss away my vote on any party that doesn't follow my beliefs - a vote for moderates and liberals is still a vote for moderates and liberals even if they have an (R) next to their name.