Posted on 09/04/2006 11:48:50 AM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
True conservatives have watched with dismay in recent years as the Republican Party, once the paragon of fiscal conservatism, has thrown its most cherished principles overboard. Todays Republican Party has taken up the cause of Big Government with all the gusto of the most profligate Democrat and Republicans have proven to be even more irresponsible with taxpayer money than the Democrats. In Buck Wild: How Republicans Blew the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government, Stephen A. Slivinski explains how this happened and how the Republican Party can and must be recaptured for economic responsibility.
Conservatives - NOT RINOs - make the party great. The more RINOs in government, the worse it becomes.
Actually, I'd say any conservative who is "weak kneed" is a de facto RINO.
I think the problem is that the electorate expects more services and sees it as somebody else picking up the tab. While some folks are vehement against welfare, for example, they like programs that benefit them - and don't see it as welfare.
The GOP is just giving people what they want.
You think that with the "dot-com" bust, the DJ nosedive, a full blown recession, Enron and WorldCom, the attack of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the ten(?) other hurricanes since 2000 to hit, along with higher energy prices, that we might forgive the Repubs for not forcing budget cuts?
You know Delay is an honest guy, and he said they did the best they could. In the house, if you don't get local projects, you don't get re-elected.
It's not that bad when you look at the rise in discretionary spending compared to GDP. The majority is defense spending.
http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf#search=%22cbo%20historical%20budget%20%22
I appreciate your zeal for Conservatism and Limited Government. That's why I am a Republican. If we're not about Small Government than I'm in the wrong. Wrong website, wrong voting patterns, wrong convictions, wrong everything.
I don't claim that Stephen Slivinski is coming down off the mountain with the tablets here. Hopefully, a conservative with a different point of view is here who can refute what he writes. Let me give you a sampling, while staying under the 200 word limit so I don't get sued for copywright violations:
Let's start in the 1970's.
"But as President, Nixon thoroughly disappointed supporters of limited government.
Nixon mainly believed that it was the role of Republicans to run Big Government better than Democrats. So he spent taxpayer money faster than Lyndon Johnson in many areas--much to the delight of the congressional Democrats. He even created entirely new agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, both of which Republicans would later target as the poster children of a bloated and out of control federal government."
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Now bear in mind that you are talking to someone (me) who went to 2nd grade with a Richard Nixon lunchbox filled with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cookies and juice.
Can somebody a little bit older who lived through that period not watching Sesame Street tell me a different story?
Ping (Big Government/Nanny State)
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