Seven Questions That I Am Afraid I Will Never Hear A Republican Ask (*vanity*)

It's election season again, and once again Republicans all over the country are busy snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I've been watching the campaign ads, both regional and national -- I couldn't avoid 'em if I wanted to -- and listening to the debates, and time and time again I hear Republican candidates making the same fundamental mistakes.

Dammit, people, we are not the Discount Democrats! We are not here to promise the voters "everything the Democrats can give you, but at a lower price!" We will never win by presenting ourselves as the WalMart of American politics!

Instead, just once, I'd love to see a Republican candidate muster the testicular fortitude to throw these questions in the face of his or her Democratic opponent.

#1: On Education

"Thanks to the teachers unions, the Democratic Party has been in complete control of our public education system for the last 50 years. In that time the per-pupil cost of public education has skyrocketed, the test scores and graduation rates have plunged, our schools have become combat zones, and every two years you come back and tell us that the problem is that the schools need more tax money.

"Isn't it obvious? What your party has been doing for the past fifty years is bad for our children and doesn't work! Isn't it time to try something else?"

#2: On Poverty

"Forty years ago Lyndon Johnson led the Democratic Party to declare war on poverty. The time has come to admit that the war is over; poverty has won. Today there are more poor Americans than ever before; more out-of-wedlock births and single-parent familes than ever before; more people dependent on government handouts than ever before; and an enormous social service bureaucracy that seems to be more interested in keeping people dependent than in helping them to become self-sufficient.

"Isn't it obvious? What your party has been doing for the past forty years is bad for poor people and doesn't work! Isn't it time to try something else?"

#3: On Social Security

"Look, let's be honest: the Social Security system is a Ponzi Scheme. It's a con game, and if it were being run by a private party instead of the Federal government the people in charge would be arrested and thrown in prison. The Social Security system will not remain solvent -- by design it cannot remain solvent -- and the true wonder is that for 70 years you've managed to keep the con game going by forcing an ever larger number of people to join the system. But the time has come to admit that this system is designed to go bankrupt sooner or later, and it's time to start letting people escape from it while they still have something to save.

"Isn't it obvious? What your party has been doing for the past seventy years is bad for retirees and doesn't work! Isn't it time to try something else?"

#4: On Prescription Drugs

"Let's try an analogy that even you can understand. It costs your friends in Hollywood $200 million dollars to make a major movie. But a lot of people can't afford $8.50 a ticket for a first-run show, so Congress enacts a law setting ticket prices at $2 apiece and mandating free video cassettes for the poor. Just how long do you think your friends in Hollywood will keep making new movies for the American market if there's no way they can make a profit doing it?

"Isn't it obvious? What your party wants to do will be bad for the pharmaceutical companies and really bad for the people who depend on new medicines. Can we afford to even try this experiment? Shouldn't we come up with a different plan now?"

#5: On Corruption

"Enron, Enron, Enron: every time you say Enron, I'll say Teamsters Union. How many United Mine Workers officials have done hard time for corruption and witness intimidation? How many non-union workers have been beaten for trying to cross a picket line? Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?

"For more that sixty years the Democratic Party has not just turned a blind eye to union corruption, violence, and mob connections; you have actively benefitted from these things. Your party has stood by, winking and smiling, while corrupt union officials have looted pension funds, rigged union elections, and threatened the families of witnesses in corruption probes.

"You like to say that my party is in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. I say this beats being in bed with unions with proven mob connections. At least pharmaceutical companies don't intentionally kill people!

"Isn't it obvious? What your party has been doing for the past sixty years is bad for union workers but works way too well for you! Don't union workers deserve honest leadership and political representation?"

#6: On Defense

"Thirty years ago the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party began neutering the American military and Intelligence agencies. Since then Islamic fundamentalists has taken over most of the Middle East, homicidal warlords have taken over most of Africa, and narco-terrorists have gained major ground in South and Central America. We had a brief respite during the Reagan administration when we updated the Navy and modernized the Air Force -- and confronted Soviet Communism head-on, and watched it collapse from its own internal problems -- but immediately afterwards the Democrats squandered the so-called "Peace Dividend" and wasted our inventory of cruise missiles blowing up aspirin factories in the Sudan.

"Now, today, North Korea has the atomic bomb, China has nuclear missiles that can hit any city in the U.S., and Islamic terrorists around the globe are gleefully killing American citizens. At the same time the families of American servicemen and women are living on food stamps, airplanes and helicopters are grounded because they don't have spare parts, and there are Army units that can't train because they don't have ammunition.

"Isn't it obvious? What your party has been doing for the past thirty years is bad for the country and puts American citizens at risk! Isn't it time to try something else?"

#7: On Government and Change

"In 1923 H.L. Mencken wrote, 'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'

"These 'kitchen table' issues you like to talk about -- education, poverty, social security, prescription drugs -- don't they look just a little hobgoblin-ish to you? The education crisis, the poverty crisis, the social security crisis, the prescription drug crisis: weren't all of these all local issues until the Democratic Party discovered a national crisis? And hasn't your party spent more than half a century telling us that these enormous national, not local, problems can only be solved with equally enormous national programs and obscenely large amounts of taxpayer money?

"And haven't you continued to insist that these problems can only be addressed through ever larger and more expensive government programs, even though all objective evidence seems to indicate that your programs are not working?

"The first and hardest step in addiction recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Isn't it time for you in the Democratic Party to admit that you have an uncontrollable and irrational addiction to big government?

"Isn't it obvious? Time and time again, for more than half a century, your party's solutions have only made the problems you claim to be addressing worse!

Meanwhile our national debt just hit an all time record high of $6.2 trillion dollars:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

(and that apparently doesn't even include social security obligations, which tack on an additional $30 billion or so!)

So why don't you run for something?

I considered it, but couldn't afford the pay cut.

I think that's one of the fundamental unspoken differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. Republicans look on elected office as taking time out from their career to serve the public good. Democrats look at it as a chance to land a really cushy and (by their standards) well-paying job where they won't have to have a performance review for at least two years.

Illegal Immigrants!

Maybe an industrious and talented freeper with more time on their hand than me can do a little research here.

The great Bob Grant, father of talk radio, for DECADES has talked about the "Immigration and Naturalization Act of 196?" and predicted the long term damage that we are just now experiencing.

His knowledge of history is outstanding as well as his ability to anticipate unintended consequences.

Posting some facts about this act would be beneficial, IMHO.

I think that if you took a moment to go (Link to RNC), you would find that Republicans have been addressing these issues....

Yes, the Republicans have been addressing these issues in a polite, passive, reserved, let's post it on a web site and see if anyone stumbles across it sort of way. I *am* listening. I *do* care. I belong to the party, I donate to the party, I'm at the caucuses, I'm at the private strategy meetings, and I pound the pavement to stump for candidates. I know that Republicans talk about these issues amongst themselves. But for some reason when they get in front of a crowd or the TV camera light goes on, Republicans turn into polite, reserved, compromising policy wonks.

This piece is about getting in the Democrat's faces and confronting them with their failures, and doing it simply, clearly, and passionately. Until we learn to do that, we're always going to be the Washington Generals of politics.

You write well, and that's a good Mencken quote. About welfare, though: is it really true that there are more poor people now than ever before? And haven't we already begun to do things differently over the last six years? About Social Security: is it really the case that the system was "designed" to fail? Isn't it more likely that changes in technology and social behavior have doomed it? If you told people in 1937 or 1957 that some day Americans wouldn't be having children in numbers sufficient to keep the system afloat you would probably have been greeted with baffled and confused stares. To be sure, having government pensions may have led many to have smaller families, but would another system be able to avoid similar or other flaws? Granted the system can't work forever, but the recent stock market slumps and corporate scandals have made people ask whether another system would be any better. If you can improve things, present a plan, but for the time being, moves to privatize Social Security can't win.

The solution? It's not within the GOP, IMHO.

I disagree. I think the Republican Party is the best vehicle for getting to this goal. It will be easier to give the party a metaphorical testicle transplant than to raise the Libertarians or a similar party up to nationally taken seriously status.

As for the "bipartisan consensus builders:" the good thing about them is that they're spineless. Let's bend 'em our way for a change.

As a republic all my life, I get very tired of all the so called good republican running the party down and acusing them of not doing anything like your thread.

Yet most of your issues are listed as priority issues for the Republicans.

I predict we will have zillions ( a little exageration) of posts and threads of so called former proud republicans trashing the republicans along the lines of your thread between now and the election. I don't think the timing is coincidental!

We have the Simon bashers daily who don't even live in Kalifornia bashing Simon as a loser.

It is time for real republicans to pay attention to President Reagan's 11th commandment and become broken glass republicans this November to vote out the rats.

Peace, friend.

I'm sorry if my tone offended you. My intent in writing this was not to run down the Republicans but to wake them up! I'm watching too many candidates that I put my time and money behind falter in the polls in these last few weeks, as they try to court the mushy middle by out-Santa Clausing the Democrats. I am *very* concerned by this, because if the Dems take the House of Representatives we will be well and truly screwed.

You say, "Don't speak ill of other Republicans."

I say, "Get some fire in your bellies, lads! We've got a country to save!"

How about both:

I say, "Don't speak ill of other Republicans."

You say, "Get some fire in your bellies, lads! We've got a country to save!"

In the meantime we vote as many of the rats out of congress that we can on 5 November.

Thanks for this:

So what's your answer on Nov 6th when Simon is the loser? It's the (R)s that lost it. Maybe, just maybe this guy would have taken on ILLEGALS that he might have won. Just another milk toast. This man is too lightwight. Who's fault is that? Mine? Jusy maybe if the ILLEGALS were castigated & kicked out of this state a conservative would be elected. Instead not a word from these elitists. And don't think that I want Gov Dufus back. BTW I went around in my conservative Orange county area trying to get petitions to RECALL this Gov Dufus & a majority would not even sign it. That's your pubbies of today. Time for a new party.

If you can improve things, present a plan, but for the time being...

Ah, you misunderstand. That's a policy wonk's job. I'm an agitator. My job is to attract eyes and ears to the idea that the system is broken and the Democrat's plan to fix it amounts to duct tape and bent coat hangars. Coming up with an improved system is a job for a better and brighter mind than mine.

Anything I should add to the list?

Yes. The number one question should be,"Why isn't voter fraud being investigated and prosecuted?",and the number 2 question should be,"Why aren't our borders sealed,and all the illegal aliens rounded up and deported?

BTW,number 3 should probably be,"Why the HELL is Giddy Dolt being supported for a Senate seat?".

If I were running the Forrester campaign, I would definitely push some of these pie-hitting questions for debate! He has nothing to lose really, he can't win with out scoring points, so he might as well take out the club.

New Jersey is the Teacher Union strong-hold too. Man that is one hot issue there. He should also nail them on immigration. New Jersey is over-run by immigrant and NO ONE, not even Bush and friends will lift a hand to help. But those issues will play well with New Jersey's independant voters.

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