Feelin' like this?
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.
I just want to know what it will take to stop the damn excuses. If the GOP gets control of the Senate, what will their excuse be then? I hope to God they get the Senate back just so they can put up or shut up.
Having a war on is not a legit excuse for boosting pork-barrel spending at home. Is it ok to give hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to Ted Turner (who pretends to be a farmer) because there's a war on?
Man you do believe what the media tells you. Don't you?
Bush lost the 1992 election because he failed to offer a plan to fix the economy. Raising taxes did not hurt Bush. Clinton ran on a plan to fix the economy by raising taxes some more. He got elected and then did raise taxes. It took Al Gores vote to get the Clinton tax increase passed. Clinton got re-elected. Clinton raised taxes and lied. Whee!! No big deal. All Bush needed was to show he had a plan to fix the economy and he would have won re-elecion. Bush Sr. could have, as Clinton did, propose to raise taxes to fix the economy. Bush could have proposed cutting taxes to fix the economy He could have proposed offering virgin sacrefices to fix the economy. That election was about what Bill Clinton said is was. It was the economy, STUPID. If the economy is bad and the president does nothing to try to fix it, he gets defeated. Bush felt the economy would fix itself as it did. But truth had nothing to do with winning elections.
If getting caught lying to voters cost politicians elections, then Bill Clinton would never have been elected.
Lying is not a political sin. Fornicating interns is not a political sin. Selling secrets to the Chinese is not a political sin. Failing to do something about a bad economy is a political sin. As FDR proved, a president does not have to fix the economy, he just has to look like he is fixing the economy. Failure to try to fix a bad ecnomy has and will agains cost elections.
You need to proceed to the clue box and pick one up.
IN the US it takes 3 things. A president has to have a majority in the house. Bills in the house can pass with control and a simple majority of the votes. A President has to have 60 votes in the Senate. 51 out of 100 is not enough. It takes 60 votes to break a fillibuster. 41 votes can block a president in the Senate. Nothing passes that 41 Senators do not want passed. Said another way anything that 60 senators want will pass the senate. 60 senators can bring anything to the floor for a vote. Party control is not nearly as important as 60 votes. A party can have 55 members in the senate and get absoluely nothing passed if the other 45 are against them in all matters.
In the 20th century only FDR and LBJ had that kind of control. And as you look back they are the ones that changed things. It was teh new deal and Great Society that took this nation left. Everyone else on the right or left were just holding actions. Clinton could not move to the left and Reagan could not move to the right. It was with less than 60 votes a checkmate for both sides.
Dubya is the only Republcan president that has a chance to change things for the right. But nothing will change unless he gets 60 votes in the senate.To get 60 votes takes suport of about 60 percent of the voting population. When the votes are tied as they were in 2000 you get a tied senate.
But to get that 60 percent Bush must make the election about him and he must maintain better than 60 percent job approval rating. Hisorically what happens is the Democrats and Republicans fight. The squishy center does not like fights. The media blames the Republicans for the fight and the squishy center votes for the Democrats.
You win the center by playing the Democrats as the Aggressors out to do harm, and the Republicans as people trying to solve problems by working together. Democrats are well aware of what is at stake. So if they can start a fight and get it going, they win. If Republicans can stay above fighting and continue to appear as those just trying to work together to solve problems they just might win big enough to change things.
Most right wing people want to brawl. Democrats know that, so they try to start brawls. Once the brawl is started the media alays blames the brawl on the Republicans and the squishy middle votes left again. Democrats win when there are brawls even if they lose the brawl they win the election. And people wonder why Daschle is aggressive and nasty...
There is never a problem getting folks who agree with you to vote for you. But sadly there are never enough of those people to elect anyone. Elections are won by getting folks that disagree with you to vote for you.
It is a trick that the right has never mastered. It is why they almost never win.
Duby is trying to make a difference. Will the Right be able to stop Dubya before he achieves victory? You can count on them giving it their best shot.
Doh...... I am not voting third party, but if you make fun of people that are thinking of it then you are driving them away. You should be pleading with people to stay and giving them reasons why to stay with the repubican party instead of making fun of them.
These are legitimate concerns and if you ignore them then you lose big time and so doe's the Republican party.
I voted for Bush and every Libertarian I know did as well. We thought he was cool, but we were wrong, sigh.....he likes to be friends with the Democrats more than he likes whats best for the country.
Ok we were voting against Gore but my point still holds, why vote for a Republican if he acts like a Democrat?
Amen..... congress should be in session at most one month a year, might slow down the erosion of the constitution a bit.
It is to Conservatives, if you think the people that vote for Republicans and the people that vote for Democrats are the same then perhaps it is you who need a clue.
I hope you are right. I am voting Republican this fall and I hope this stratagy works believe me. I will only cheer though when the Republicans do something with the majority.
I still think that standing for something works with the electorate. If I am am wrong and the Senate goes 60 for the Republicans I will be cheering the loudest.
That's telling. Indeed.
You seem passionate. Yet you don't have a bit of passion about the coup d'etat that occurred when Jeffords jumped and made Daschle the truly illegitimate (read: not by the will of the voters) Senate Leader. Jeffords paved the way for Daschle's obstructionism (read: Judge confirmations in committee). Any rebuilding of our military now must go through Daschle because of Jeffords.
In many, many nations, what Jeffords did would have caused a civil war!
You can slam Bush for ANYTHING
, yet what occurred with Jeffords illicits no concern from you whatsoever?
My, my.
If these clowns wish to throw the election to the RATS, more power to them. They just need to shut up afterwards.
Ever since my eyes were opened and I escaped the RAT plantation, this has been my modus operandi in a nutshell.
DEFEAT THE LEFT.
You keep mentioning this. Clinton didn't do anything to the terrorists under his regime, except bomb the infamous pharmaceutical factory and hit a couple empty terrorist camps. What if he had done something during his administation to stop terrorism? How much would he have spent? How many more government programs would have been established? But he didn't, so in theory, the spending related to the war on terror can be directly attributed to the previous administration. In addition, clinton rode the shirt tails of the Reagan years, of course claiming it was him. The economy turned during his last year in office. When you compared the clinton spending numbers to Bush spending numbers did you take into account the depreciation value of money?
On the other hand, what if Gore were president and had to do something regarding the terrorists? How much would he be spending? Would this country be under marshall law? What other socialist programs would have been implemented for the 'good of the nation'?
I would also like to see your figures if you don't mind.
You can not compare what was done to what is being done, the situations are extremely different.
Indeed. Indications so far are that Bush will never exercise his veto pen.
Feelin' like this?
The truth will out.
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