Ed Gillespie the RNC chairman has said Republicans aren't still for limited government...

Do you remember why Smith left the GOP? For exactly the reasons we are discussing -- because it wouldn't stand for principle, but instead had become a Big Government, poll-driven party like the Dimmycraps.

At least he didn't tip the Senate to the Dems like your friend Jumping Jim Jeffords.

Do you remember why Smith left the GOP? For exactly the reasons we are discussing -- because it wouldn't stand for principle, but instead had become a Big Government, poll-driven party like the Dimmycraps

And yet he(Bob Smith) supported the dimmycrats in their efforts to stop drilling at ANWR.

I know I am going to have to post the above again and again, but I have no qualms since it is the truth.

But its so much better when we taxing and spending
are increased by the Republican party than
Democrats doing it.

That's why vote ARNOLD-RINO FOR GOVERNOR!
DRIVING TAXES AND SPENDING UP WITH A REPUBLICAN LABEL!

Now if Hillary would switch parties and Hatch
get his way.

Hillary/Arnold Republican ticket in 2008!
RINO ALL THE WAY.

If conservatives would rally around the Constitution party

Yep those ifas, couldas, wouldas, are always in play... Heck it they were that interested in the Constitution Party the CP wouldn't have gotten less than 100,000 votes in 2000. People are were they are because that's the choice they make. Face it there aren't the nubmers out there to make any 3rd party a winner.

And if this editorial writer would have been honest he would have included some quotes to go with his assertions. Now I'm sure whatever was said allowed him to draw his assertions but that doesn't mean that had someone else heard the same info by the same person that the assertions may have been different.

So all I'm saying it's an editorial, no quotes, so take it with a grain of salt until proven otherwise.....

Look, Smith was wrong on ANWR -- although instead of opening it up for drilling under government control, I'd rather sell the land where the drilling would take place. But just because a guy is wrong on an issue or two, you want to drum him out of the conservative movement. Shall I go back and get Senator Smith's speech? It's a very good analysis of the GOP.

Or are you a Republican Kool-Aid drinker?

Al Sharpton announced he becoming a Republican
lets run him against Schumer and get RINO
Senator New York. Another big RINO win!

Raise our taxes to records level, spending
like no tommorrow, spit on the Constitution
befriend our enemies all its ok
as long as we have that Republican label!

I stand corrected but the fact is they didnt support Bush then and they still dont.

After the show was over, Gilliespie called Rush.

Thanks for the update.

Thanks for the link to Rush's update, Ben.

I get the impression that is was not Chairman Gillespie himself who called Rush, but one of his flunkies, this "Jim" guy.
Where is our Party Chairman to defend/ explain himself?

Scrambling around covering his assetts as best he can, I reckon!

Might we wonder if he will, in the next day or two, bear down real hard, grind his teeth, grunt, and manage to grow at least one testicle in order that he might come before his fellow Republicans (and everybody else) and clarify in cogent terms for one and all what he and the GOP are REALLY all about?
If he can... if he dares?

Is anyone out there in FReeperdom holding their breath for such a forthcoming, honest clarification?

I, for one, am not.

Here, FWIW, is an exerpt of a recent communication to a trusted Conservative Republican Leader here in Maine:

"... I keep hoping that the Manchester Union Leader misquoted him or got their wires crossed someplace, as if this really is the direction that the Party is officially taking, the implications are no less than chilling.

It seems that the GOP "Big Tent" is sufficiently capacious for all... EXCEPT "Conservatives", it seems - and any of us who have the unmitigated audacity to cling to our unfashionable "Pro-Life" beliefs seem to be especially "personae non gratia" in the "Big Tent" lately.

If the "Leadership" of our Party has indeed sold out to the Left, then we have no political options, it would seem, other than an inevitable, National terminal decent into the dark ages of totalitarian socialism. I know that sounds pretty pessimistic, but what other options do Liberty - loving Americans have after we devolve into essentially a one-Party system, dominated by the same cunning political operatives?

Many of us don't even pretend that any 3rd Party has the ghost of a chance any more of seriously threatening a global political juggernaut like that. And I have little doubt that "United Europe" / Common Market as well as other International concerns have significant interests and influence in American political developments.

Whatever has been going on in the Republican Party for the past year or so has raised the concerns of many of us who had such high hopes in the Administration of President Bush and the apparent GOP "Majority" in the House and Senate.

But now our President seems to be rolling over to the Democrat's every whim - at least in the arena of Domestic policy .
His laudable Tax Relief program has been cut in half by a powerful fellow "Republican" Senator, and what remains of it's positive economic effects seems to have been negated, if not reversed, by what seems to be a race between the two Parties to out-spend and overpork each other!

Our CIC essentially let Senator "Ted" Kennedy write the Education Bill, and Campaign promises of Educational Choice for Parents seem to have been summarily snuffed out by the Democrats and the powerful Teacher's Unions like one of Bill Clinton's nasty old cigar butts. It seems to me that hardly a liberal democrat passes through the White House these days without our Chief Executive groveling at their feet in hopes of placating or appeasing them somehow.
I'm rather surprised that they aren't complaining about having to trip over him all the time!

And what happened to our so-called "Majority" in Congress?

It used to be that 51% in the Senate was a "Majority", wasn't it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
At least when the Dems had 51% of the seats, there was no doubt in anyone's mind who was firmly in control of the U.S. Senate!

But now that Republicans allegedly hold clear title to the 51%, it seems that such a ratio no longer constitutes a dominant influence; thanks to the Dems' little parliamentary trick of filibustering anything and everything that they are not happy with, and our weak-kneed Republican "Leadership"s reluctance to hold them to actually having to bother to stage a "real" filibuster, then unless and until the Republican Caucus controls at least 66% of the Senate seats... the U.S. Senate remains firmly in the control of - that's right - the Democrats!

Have we heard any more about the Unborn's "Right to Life" from Washington? I surely have not, and I have pretty much given up expecting to any time soon.

The Dems retain the supremacy and control of the Federal Judiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, it seems.
And they are not about to relinquish it!

So now it is considered a "Constitutional Right" for Americans to rip apart and slaughter their pre-birth babies, engage in sodomy, and "Marry" another homosexual of the same gender (or I suppose of another species for that matter), but it is a heinous Federal crime to display the 10 Commandments where they might "offend" someone or try to broadcast political information 60 days prior to an Election, or even possess a firearm in many parts of this Country.
The very mention of "God" is forbidden to even be printed in our Government School textbooks, we are told, yet a 14 year-old girl can get an abortion while School is in session, and her Parents are not privy to knowledge of the procedure even after the fact, much less ever asked for their consent or permission.

And it seems that "Republicans" can't get out of the way or bend over quick enough to facilitate this appalling and obscene perversion of what once was called "Justice" and the "Rule of Law" in America!

Can anyone tell me what has happened here?

Have powerful, sinister forces within the liberal power elite (I can think of one in particular) "gotten to", "bought off", intimidated, or somehow compromised the common - sense agendae, moral foundations, and core principles of our Republican Leadership...

Or have they been disingenuous with us all along?

It saddens me sorely to consider either scenario.
Can anyone advance a rational alternative explanation?
I surely wish that someone would!

For a while some of us were led to believe that all of this capitulation and appeasement was part of a grand Republican master - strategy to ultimately advance the cause of a Free, prosperous, Constitutional Republic.
But now that fond, thin hope is beginning to fade into what increasingly appears to be more of a cold, hard reality.

Have we indeed been sold out?

"Uncle Jaque"
Republican Activist
Maine

bttt.

http://www.theunionleader.com/Articles_show.html?article=25814&archive=1

Granite Status:
The party of Reagan?
RNC, newspaper disagree
By JOHN DiSTASO
Senior Political Reporter

JUST LIKE RON? The Republican Party’s national chairman tried to douse a political wildfire yesterday by assuring The Union Leader that “the party of George W. Bush is very much the party of Ronald Reagan.”

But Publisher Joe McQuaid isn’t buying it.

While the Status was vacationing last week, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie stopped in to chat with McQuaid and two top editors. The visit, while friendly, resulted in three editorials critical of the new GOP. One charged that Gillespie had “said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of government are over.”

That editorial, published on Sunday, caught the attention of national talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who spent considerable time talking about it during his post-holiday Tuesday show. In phrases taken from his monologue, he wrote on his Web site that The Union Leader’s editorial had “taken the wind out of my sails” and left him wondering if his 15 years of fighting for conservatism had been “flushed down the toilet.”

“Yes, Rush, it’s true,” The Union Leader responded in an editorial yesterday (EDITORIAL). Gillespie, it said, had defined “fiscal responsibility” as increasing the federal budget at a slower rate than the Democrats.

He had been asked why Bush and the GOP-led Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at “an alarming rate,” and why the party has “embraced” expansion of the federal role in education, agriculture and entitlement programs. The editorial quoted Gillespie as saying, “Those questions have been decided” because the public wants it.

Limbaugh noted on his Web site that he was told by a Gillespie assistant after the Tuesday show that “because Ed would not commit to ‘shutting down the Department of Education’ or ‘absolutely rejecting a drug benefit,’ the editorial page editors took it as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.”

“Well . . . yes,” McQuaid responded yesterday. “They’re right. We do take that as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.” He noted Gillespie did not deny the accuracy of the editorials.

McQuaid said Gillespie had been asked to name “any area or agency where they were looking to dismantle, and I don’t think he came up with one.” He said the discussion left him asking, “Let me get this straight — these guys are for bigger government at a slower rate that the Democrats?”

McQuaid said previous party chairs “would have been vigorous and said, ‘No, we’re for cutting spending.’ Instead this guy’s attitude was — and he was very pleasant about it — that ‘the people have made it clear they are for a federal government role in education and for prescription drugs, and, therefore, the Republican Party is for it because the people are for it.’” McQuaid said he was disappointed by Gillespie’s view of Bush’s GOP.

A Gillespie letter to the editor arrived about midday yesterday. “Since President Bush came into office,” he wrote, “Republicans have rejected $1.9 trillion in additional budget spending proposed by Democrats while passing $350 billion in tax relief just his year.”

The Bush budget the GOP Congress “worked to pass” this year “limits spending growth to 4 percent, the same amount as family income,” Gillespie wrote, while non-defense discretionary spending is up by 2 percent.

Gillespie wrote that because efforts to eliminate the federal education department were defeated, “the issue is settled.” But, he said, “this administration has applied conservative principles to the now-settled federal role in education, a point you neglected to mention” in the editorials.

Gillespie wrote that he also pointed out at the meeting that on Medicare, “our choices” are to have a program “where government makes decisions and delivers care or a market-oriented approach where patients make choices and private providers deliver the care.”

McQuaid said Gillespie’s letter settled nothing. “The GOP has settled on big government in education, is spending more, but slower than the Democrats, and is expanding government in Medicare,” he said. “Nowhere in his letter or his meeting was there any word of cutting or eliminating or reducing the government.”

The full letter will run on tomorrow’s op-ed page.

Also at the meeting was state GOP Chairman Jayne Millerick. Smart woman that she is, Jayne’s not taking sides in this one. She did say she thought it was “key” that Gillespie made the point in his letter about non-defense discretionary spending being up by only 2 percent.

What about the tax cut? Isn’t that Reaganesque?

“I don’t want to judge what the editors should say,” Millerick said. “But the tax cut was an important piece of the economic puzzle that the President and Republican leaders led through Congress.”

No quotes from Gillespie, eh?

http://www.theunionleader.com/opinion_show.html?article=25747

Yes Rush, it’s true:
RNC chief rejects
GOP traditions

RUSH LIMBAUGH read from one of our editorials yesterday, and a lot of people have asked if what he said was true. It is.

The editorial was titled GOP, MIA and it was printed in last weekend’s New Hampshire Sunday News. Because of all the interest, we have reposted it on the Web site.

We wanted to take this opportunity to assure Rush and everyone else that the editorial was and is 100 percent true. Over the course of an hour-long meeting with Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, we took great care to give him every opportunity to explain himself fully so that nothing could be misunderstood. The result was a surprisingly frank admission that the Republican Party defines “fiscal responsibility” as increasing the federal budget at “a slower rate of growth” than the Democrats (his words).

We asked him three times to explain why President Bush and the Republican Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at such an alarming rate, and why the party has embraced the expansion of the federal government’s roles in education, agriculture and Great Society-era entitlement programs.

“Those questions have been decided,” was his response. The public wants an expanded federal role in those areas, and the Republican Party at the highest levels has decided to give the public what it wants.

We were fully aware that publishing those comments — all made on the record — would mean we would never be invited to any $1,000-a-plate Republican dinners in Washington. But the rank-and-file Republicans, the men and women who vote GOP because they believe in federalism and limited government, deserved to know what we knew. Now they do. And they can use the information as they see fit.

Abandon all principles, ye who enter here.