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.