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.”
(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),
Yea, I'm on board now.
I agree that McCain has opposed wasteful government spending and that is good. But McCain’s position on government subsidies for illegal aliens and his support of programs to combat supposed global warming are far more likely to cause huge fiscal problems.
“I’m going to be around to watch his defeat in November”
I plan on saying “We told you so” quite a bit. Probably pointing and laughing as well
What are we going to do about it now???
I supported Fred, but Fred didn’t win. Are we supposed to take our football and go home and ruin the country with Hillary or Obama because we didn’t get our candidate??? I am no big fan of McCain, but I am going to be a better man than McCain was after 2001 and put the country ahead of *my* personal feelings.
Another chatterer that I never heard of giving conservatives a lecture on the Keating Five guy.
Now you're talking brother!
That's the spirit we need to curb this traitor!
I’m not claiming any such thing. I’m basing my decision not to vote for McCain on his KNOWN past record and associations. For me, that’s enough. I had no hand in choosing this man, and they’ll have to carry on without my vote. Whether or not my vote matters or not is another matter. But I won’t vote for him OR support him.
EVERY time the Republican Party foists a rotten candidate on us (national or local level) I’m told to suck it up and vote for the guy anyway. I’ve usually done it, and lots of others have too. They got used to that behavior, and figured they can do what they want, and we’ll support them anyway.
This time, I’m making a stand. A personal stand, perhaps, but a stand. They can do what they like, but they’ll do it without my vote, my support, and perhaps most importantly, without my money. If Hillary runs the country into the ground, then maybe people will wake up. If they don’t, the country didn’t have much going for it anyway.
Here is your mistake... objection to McCain is NOT based upon personal feelings... objection to McCain is his history and he hates conservatives on the same wavelength as Hillary. Now 'fairness' dictates an honest evaluation of who John McCain really is and not get caught up in this paralyzing fear of who Hillary is. They both come from the same ideological bed. My problem with McCain is he is a wolf trying to wear the sheep's clothing, it does not fit and he knows it.
True, McCain heretically opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. However, he now appears penitent and observant.
Bull. He defends his vote, although it's on different grounds from what he said at the time. He's no tax cutter.
To compound the distributional deficit, low-skill immigrant households pay less in taxes than do the average U.S. Households. These low-skill immigrant households pay about $10,573 a year in taxes. Subtract this from the amount government spends on them and you have a deficit of $19,588.
..Let's carry these numbers for our wonderful illegal -- soon to be legal -- households out a few years. Rector says that the average adult lifespan for each head of household is about 60 years. The research shows that this distributional deficit will continue throughout this life span for low-skill immigrant households. The total? About $1.2 million for each low-skill immigrant household.
In 2004 there were 4.5 million low-skill immigrant households in the U.S. More math: Multiply the average net distributional deficit of $19,588 per household and you get a total deficit of $89.1 billion .... per year! Ask yourself .. can this country afford this? Can we afford an amnesty bill that will legitimize and legalize these illegal-alien households, and millions more to come? No. The costs are financially unsustainable.
“What are we going to do about it now???”
Most likely lose in a landslide reminiscent of Reagan/Mondale. Then...the party needs to do some major restructuring of it’s primary system before ‘12. Move strong conservative states to the front. Only these states can be winner-take-all. Iowa, New Hampshire, New York.....all to the back.. Give the more reliably conservative states more than half of the delegates needed to win. Close all the primaries, NO indies, NO dims.
Perhaps then that party would put forth their first conservative candidate since 1984.
I saw that idiot too and I’m pretty sure he was a democrat. But I think it says a lot about the Republican party that we thought he might have been a pubbie.
That’s fine and you are an adult and you certainly have the right to do so,
But be prepared for Hillary’s tax on 401k/private retirement plans to fund social security, be prepared for Charlie Rangel’s tax plan, be prepared for illegals to have drivers licenses, be prepared for legalized partial birth abortions and be prepared for 20 to 30 years of Clinton Federal bench appointments, be prepared of our troops under Hilabama the C-in-C.
And if you accuse me of using scare tactics, all I have to say is you are damn right! The thought of Hillary as President scares me to no end.
So, go bet on “another Carter to get another Reagan” bet, but don’t be disappointed when that doesn’t work out.
Seems you've bought into McCain's strategy of listing names of people as a substitute for substantive discussion. Don't forget it was Warren Rudman who got us David Souter.
I didn’t post the picture of Burger King, but see number 52. If he is a budget hawk, I am the Queen of Sheba.
I saw that idiot too and I’m pretty sure he was a democrat. But I think it says a lot about the Republican party that we thought he might have been a pubbie.
Deroy Murdock sounds like an abused wife. Sure, he beats me, but he’s really sorry this time. And what other alternative do I have?
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