Posted on 05/29/2002 8:44:38 AM PDT by Zack Nguyen
Why should Republicans bother to vote GOP next November 5? Inexplicably, President Bush and congressional Republicans are giving their party base myriad reasons to go fishing on Election Day.
Republicans and Democrats have proven to be pigs in a bipartisan pen on pork-barrel spending. While some Republicans still treat taxpayers' dollars with reverence, too many more stand gleefully at the trough, snout-by-snout, with their Democratic colleagues.
This Congress is set to hike federal spending by 15 percent over just two years, more than quadruple the inflation rate. Most of this does nothing to fight terrorism.
On May 13, Bush signed a $191 billion farm bill that boosts agriculture subsidies by 80 percent. Congress even included $100 million to provide rural consumers "high-speed, high-quality broadband service." The Heritage Foundation estimates that this 10-year bill will cost the average U.S. household $180 in new taxes annually.
Bush's education department budget grows from $35.75 billion in 2001 (when he arrived) to a projected $57 billion in 2005. That is a four-year, 59.5 percent increase in federal school outlays. Bush's Leave No Child Behind initiative promotes testing and higher standards, but does little to advance school choice.
Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform law. It treats the disease of legal bribery with a prescribed overdose. As if there were no First Amendment, it will restrict political activists from purchasing ads critical of political incumbents within 60 days of elections.
Bush dropped an anvil on free-marketeers this spring when he imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported steel and a 27 percent tax on Canadian softwood lumber. This has created throbbing headaches among world leaders who have grown weary of Bush's self-mocking free-trade rhetoric.
Bush has applauded a Senate bill by liberal Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico and arch-liberal Democrat Paul Wellstone of Minnesota that would force company health plans to insure mental illness and physical ailments equally. Costs will soar as employers underwrite medical care for anxiety atop angina.
Enough.
A popular conservative president should steer Congress starboard. A May 14 - 15 Fox News poll of 900 adults found Bush's job approval at 77 percent (+/- 3 percent). Alas, like his father (who achieved 90 percent favorability after the Persian Gulf War), G. W. Bush guards his political capital like an heirloom rather than invest it for even greater gains.
When Democrats smeared appellate-court nominee Charles Pickering as a racist, Bush, for instance, should have held a press conference with Pickering and his prominent black supporters from Mississippi. As Charles Evers, the brother of slain civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, said: Pickering "was standing up for blacks in Mississippi when no other white man would." Bush avoided such bold action. A thousand cuts later, Pickering's nomination fatally hemorrhaged in the Senate Judiciary Committee last March.
Bush could have enhanced the prospects for petroleum exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He could have invited local Eskimos to the Rose Garden and let them explain how oil development would lift them from poverty. Better yet, Bush could have taken the White House press corps to ANWR to unmask its potential oil acreage as a barren mosquito farm. Bush avoided the ANWR fray, thus clinching that proposal's Senate demise.
Beyond speaking softly in his bully pulpit, Bush never has touched his veto pen. Had he threatened to reject some of this absurd legislation, fence-sitting GOP congressmen would have yielded and defeated (or at least improved) these bills. Absent Bush's leadership, they climbed atop the gilded bandwagon rather than fall on their laissez-faire swords. Republicans should worry that their demoralized stalwarts will do what they did in the last midterm election: Stay home.
The proportion of self-described conservatives at the polls fell from 37 percent in 1994 to 31 percent in 1998, Voter News Service reports. Frustrated with a "Republican Revolution" turned free-spending self-parody, the party faithful sat on their hands just enough to cost Republicans five House seats.
If they don't reverse this parade of white flags, Washington Republicans similarly may shrink or lose their House majority and dash their plans to capture the Senate — not because they advanced their free-market principles but because they betrayed them and thus surrendered their claim to power.
It's easy for us to sit here and complain about Republicans that spend like Democrats, but we need to take responsibility for the people who end up being the nominees for the GOP. There needs to be a message sent to RINO's in all the primaries, and that message is: We will do everything in our power to see that you do not represent us. If enough people held themselves out and made noise during the primaries, we wouldn't have as bad of a situation as we do now.
BZZZZZZT! Can't do that. Maybe if those tall pretty buildings were still standing in Manhattan I could. But they're gone cuz some mean ol' Muslims knocked them down and killed a whole lot of Americans.
There are no "ifs" in this situation, only what "is."
If "if" were a fifth, we'd all be drunk.
Hooray! Now, let's hope SOMEONE ELSE gets a third party candidate and movement going! Maybe tomorrow. Over there.
I've learned over the years to laugh at the political punditry of you third party "real conservatives". Most of y'all couldn't find your ass using both hands, much less forecast the outcome of real people doing real work withing real political instritutions to elect real people pursuing their real priorities.
You sure are virtuous and strong on the internet, however. There's never been a more vital cyber force than "true patriots" defending "real conservatism". Nobody shows pure ideological valor over the WAN, and uncompromising principle via TCP/IP like you guys do.
And to think ... none of you are even wearing pants.
All we need to thik about arte those Judicial appointments that are languishing!!!!!I'm the Base and I'm Pretty Pissed
Bush did not endorse or promote CFR. He did sign though and gave his reservations.
Could you please cite some sources to validate your continued assertions that conservatives supported Bush and the GOP in droves during the 2000 election? Thanks!
I ask because since the election, I have yet to see any documented evidence that this was the case. In fact, I have seen just the opposite. Karl Rove's analysis (posted on a recent FR thread, I believe) indicated that conservatives stayed home in much greater numbers than they were anticipating, contributing to the closeness of the contest. Just because 3rd party candidates' numbers were down, it does not necessarily follow that conservatives voted for Bush and the GOP; it could just as easily mean that they didn't vote, period.
And I shudder at the implications if conservatives really did flock to the polls for the GOP in 2000. If so, then judging by the Democrats' gains in both Houses of Congress, it must mean there aren't nearly as many conservatives out there as we think.
I agree completely!
Admittedly, losing control of the Senate was a major blow; however, we've still got the House and very popular POTUS but the domestic agenda that has been enacted since the minimal tax cut has been that of the Leftist DemonRATS!! Jeffords or no Jeffords, we've got to be more willing to stand on--and fight for--our Principles because it just so happens that our principles are RIGHT!!
Limiting the Size and Scope of the Federal Leviathan is demonstrably better for America and we needn't be ashamed of taking that argument to the Sheeple. Instead, it seems lately we're all-too-willing to go along to get along with the Collectivists.
FReegards...MUD
ROFL......HA HA.....typical liberal - solving my problems - and naming some syndrome as my problem......If YOU only knew....HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA....NO, not hardly - just ask my husband....HA HA HA HA HA STILL ROFL
I, however, do live in the land of REALITY unlike some others.....
BTTT encore presentation. ROTFLMAO!
On a serious note, couldn't agree more. I'm not voting for my first termer GOP pigperson, who told us how conservative he was, and has proceeded to vote like Tom Daschle.
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