Posted on 02/09/2008 8:35:27 AM PST by rob777
Before my more conservative friends start leaping from buildings over Senator John McCain’s presidential primary victories, let me try to coax them back in from the ledge. Despite his myriad apostasies (e.g. McCain-Feingold’s free-speech limits, anti-ANWR-oil-drilling votes, a mixed tax-cut record, creeping Kyotoism, and cold feet on waterboarding), the Arizona Republican could do for fiscal responsibility what Ronald Reagan did for tax relief.
Thanks to the Gipper, tax reduction is as central to the Republican faith as the Resurrection is to Christianity. True, McCain heretically opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. However, he now appears penitent and observant. He proposes to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent and slice corporate taxes from 35 to 25 percent, among other reforms.
But in terms of limited-government, today’s GOP recalls the Roman Catholic Church’s excesses before the Reformation of 1517. For nearly a decade, Republicans have indulged in a spending bacchanal that shredded their moral authority and shocked Republican true believers. Like a latter-day Martin Luther, a President McCain may nail his own “95 Theses” to the U.S. Capitol’s front door and shame Congress, before it spends again.
Cato Institute researcher Michael Tanner cites White House figures to illustrate how Washington’s spending has waned and waxed since 1980. Under President Reagan, overall federal outlays decreased from 22.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, to 21.2. On President G.H.W. Bush’s watch, spending increased to 21.4 percent. During the Clinton years, expenditures fell to 18.5. And during President G.W. Bush’s tenure, spending boomeranged to 20.7 percent of GDP.
“Reagan had a Democratic House to contend with, so anything he achieved was to the good,” Tanner explains. “The elder president Bush was sort of a non-event. Clinton and a Republican Congress represented the most fiscally conservative period. And this President Bush and a Republican Congress were a disaster.”
McCain largely has refused to be led into temptation. He supported 2001’s $143.4 billion No Child Left Behind Act, but fought 2002’s $180 billion farm bailout, 2003’s $558 billion Medicare drug entitlement, and 2005’s $286.4 billion highway bill, which contained 6,371 earmarks worth $24 billion.
“Those were the four biggest budget-busting bills of the Bush presidency,” notes Heritage Foundation fiscal analyst Brian Riedl. “And McCain voted against three of them.”
Wouldn’t it be refreshing for a President McCain, at last, to give America’s farmers the straight talk they so richly deserve?
“My friends,” McCain might declare before some Mid-Western barn, “when it rains, you cry for flood relief, and it cascades in. When the skies are cloudless, you scream for drought assistance, and it arrives. When your prices are low, you demand help, and the checks soon follow. Since last January, corn prices have climbed 123 percent. Soy beans are up 176 percent, and spring wheat has risen 274 percent. And yet Washington stands ready to grant your howls for $286 billion in yet another farm-welfare bonanza. Enough already. Please stop farming the government and go till your fields. The party is over. The trough is empty. Goodbye.”
Hayekian fantasy? Hardly.
McCain courageously opposed the wasteful, environmentally destructive federal ethanol program -- while battling his Republican rivals in Iowa.
“I will open every market in the world to Iowa’s agricultural products. I’m the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see,” McCain said at the December 12 Des Moines Register debate. “And I will also eliminate subsidies on ethanol and other agricultural products. They are an impediment to competition. They’re an impediment to free markets. And I believe that subsidies are a mistake.”
McCain has stayed tightfisted on the hustings. According to a January 29 National Taxpayers Union study of presidential candidates’ promises, McCain wants $6.9 billion in new spending. Former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt Romney favors $19.5 billion in fresh outlays. “Free-market” Romney’s automated phone calls in Florida actually slammed McCain because he “voted against the AARP-backed Medicare prescription-drug program.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee advocates $54.2 billion in government-funded initiatives. Romney’s ideological gymnastics and Huckabee’s folksy profligacy should worry taxpayers.
“You would not have to look hard for reasons to dislike McCain,” says Cato’s Michael Tanner. “But if spending is what you care about, he is far more conservative than either Romney or Huckabee.”
McCain lost me when he started his ‘class envy/class warfare’ tax preferences several years ago.
Third from the bottom in his class, crashed 5 planes, great military mind.
Why do they so feel the need to say things like this? I guess it's just part of the effort to paint those who don't agree with them as hysterical children.
It's like accusing all those who did not favor making illegals legal and giving them a big, fat goody bag to boot of wanting to "deport them all." It's a false charge, but it suits their storyline.
McCain is NEVER going to turn into Reagan. Not even a little bit kinda like sort of. In fact, the only connections that John McCain had with Barry Goldwater is that at one time or another, both had served in the military, and both had served in the Senate as representatives of Arizona, Goldwater representing the state a LOT more than McCain ever has.
Still not convinced of McCain’s “bono fides”.
He did successfully intercept a ground to air missile.
The day McCain owns up to how much a TAX increase it has been for his invited illegal guests to come work for his lobbyist then he might gain a bit of credibility about fiscal discipline. Until then he is a false prophet.
This is a joke! McCain is planning raise through his carbon cap and trade scheme and impose very intrusive regulations on industry and private citizens.
Get real!
“McCain Could Become the Reagan of Fiscal Discipline”
Fiscal Discipline and the war in Iraq are the only two areas that I trust this cretin, and I’m not real big on the war so when he talked about being there for 100 years I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy.
I guess you have links to all the filibusters he has lead against the excess federal budgets of the last few years. :^)
LLS
He’s got George Allen Jr and Fred Thompson behind him now. I am not too surprised about Fred, but when George Allen Jr endorsed him, I was surprised.
If Hilabama is elected then the country will be flooded and not only that they will get ID cards enabling to commit voter fraud.
I hope McCain has learned his lesson and if elected I hope the Senate stays solid. It was the Conservatives in the Senate that held their ground. Remember, if Conservatives stay home, we may lose 6-8 senate seats which would make it cloture proof.
“but you are going to get the “Juan Hernandez” photo posted in about 10 seconds.”
No one forced him to hire a man that literally admits that he puts Mexico first.
I'm not the one leaping off the building, Deroy, YOU are. Let's try another analogy, shall we? The SS Republicana is going down, the water is lapping at the rails, and you and your ilk are rearranging the deck chairs.
Even the Drive-bys noticed he didn’t mention MMGW and Embryonic stem cell research in his speech. He’s a damnable liar and thief.
“Remember, if Conservatives stay home, we may lose 6-8 senate seats which would make it cloture proof.”
So maybe a McAmnesty nomination wasn’t a great idea?
Just this morning I saw a pundit on FOX saying that the extremists need to get over their hatred of illegal immigrant children and back McCain. The sad thing is that I don’t know if he was a democrat or a republican.
These days I’m having a lot of trouble believing that the GOP even wants to wants to win this race. What kind of moronic party leadership sits back and allows the base to be repeatedly insulted and never even suggests that the insulters tone it down?
Good people may differ, but when people claim that McCain is a Manchurian Candidate or sent to run in the primary for the Clintons, or that McCain leaked classified information without any credible proof, that’s crazy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.