Posted on 12/09/2003 7:41:48 AM PST by RogerFGay
What have Republicans done for us lately?December 9, 2003
by Roger F. Gay
The pages of MensNewsDaily.com have recently displayed the most common characteristic of American election year politics - partisan bickering at the expense of focus on issues.
MND has never hidden its conservative tendencies; a much needed balance to the increasingly irrational and often extreme leftist bias of the old media. MND writers and readers alike express strong support for adherence to constitutional principles and a strong aversion to arbitrary government control through policies based on group prejudice.
For at least a fleeting moment in our history, the lines of ideology and partisanship seemed to come together.
The Democrat Party had a Soviet (or Nazi, take your pick, they both worked the same way) approach to government, playing one group against another and promising money and power over others to groups they chose to be on their side. (They were racists when the KKK was powerful and began playing more sides in the 1960s when other movements threatened the old order.) They have systematically eroded individual rights until tens of millions of Americans now feel the crescendo; many thousands of emotionally loaded, psychologically motivated bureaucrats with the power to arbitrarily control our lives by force and intimidation, with police entering our homes without just cause dragging us away at gun point.
The rational choice, at least for a short while, was the Republican Party; the party of Lincoln, the party of limited government, the Grand Old Party. The last Republican president of that description was Gerald Ford. But even he - while noting that creation of a U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement - took the federal government too far into domestic relations, signed the bill that created it. At least he publicly acknowledged that it was wrong and in fact promised to suggest legislation to correct it.
The creation of the office was introduced as an amendment to more popular social services legislation by Democrat Senator Russell Long, whose family was strongly associated with racist neo-nazi organizations and organized crime. There were no compelling facts or scientific logic to his suggestions, just rants about "deadbeats" costing taxpayers money. If much of the anti-father rhetoric he threw around had been true, his core supporters would have opposed him; since most of them would have been part of group he attacked. At that time however, especially given the Long family's reputation, the association he made between "deadbeats" and welfare suggested an attack on racial minorities. Long's proposals also hung on the coat tails of an international leftist movement, expressed through a Hague Convention manifesto.
The bill was signed during an election year, just as most bills of this sort are; as they are aimed at spending and political favors with the hope of getting votes in return. Ford lost the election and no corrective legislation was suggested. Not much happened on this front during the Carter years. He didn't expand the program. He didn't fix the problem. The program was not in the public interest, but also not in the political interests of Jimmy Carter or Democrats to oppose. Its billion dollar a year budget would be missed by the states.
A revolution was about to occur and not many people would see just how important it was. Ronald Reagan, who had introduced so-called "no-fault" divorce to the United States as governor of California, first appeared before Congress in support of a federal child support enforcement program in 1974; along with representatives of what is now widely acknowledged as a leftist political extremist group, NOW. When the Reagan administration began suggesting dramatic increases in spending on child support enforcement in the 1980s, the Republican Party lost interest in limited government and buried its understanding of constitutional principles.
The new philosophical divide is an ACLU / NOW variety anti-religious left-wing cultism verses the Republican's pompous pseudo-religious right-wing cultism. The difference in the details of their rhetoric depends not on their real politics, but on the core groups each party intends to capture to win elections. In the end, both parties support the same domestic policy agenda apart from minor differences here and there and some exaggerated drama during election campaigns. The two party system is not really alive and well. Judged on the basis of how politics effects the huddled masses, we have a one party system with competing factions. Neither party remembers what a "free country" is supposed to be like. Corruption is rampant. The closest they ever come to an expression of ideological difference is a Marxist battle between "big business" capitalism and the "working class" in which both parties actually make promises to both sides.
For the years since 1975, Russell Long's agenda has held a prominent place in the official Democrat Party Platform and did not find its way into the official Republican Platform until the so-called "Contract With America." The radical changes that have taken place in America enjoyed bipartisan support since the time of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Rather than moving in the direction promised by Gerald Ford, president Bush promised to "build on what we already have." His HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson enacted plagiarized Soviet family policy as governor of Wisconsin, and helped promote it as the national model for welfare reform. The assistant secretary for children and families Wade Horn is a published anti-father bigot who has spent years trying to recruit churches and charities into the current web of corruption. Republicans have enjoyed a majority in both houses of Congress as well as holding the presidency without any suggestion that problems in family policy will be fixed. The two parties are pursuing the same agenda, working to incorporate different segments of society.
This is not the appropriate time for honest people who are sincerely interested in family policy to join the partisan game. To do so leaves us with nothing but an illusion that we have supported the lesser of two evils. It is time to ask, what have the parties done for me lately? Evil is not what we want and we should not give our support without concrete change.
Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. Other articles by Roger F. Gay can be found at Fathering Magazine and the MND archive.
When you reach your destination called "perfect political world", how about sending me a post card. JMO, but I think I will be waiting by the mail box for a long time.
Which course is the more
rational: elect someone
you know is evil,
and then use all the
checks and balances to keep
the evil in line;
Or elect someone
who is supposed to be good
and who thereby flies
below the radar
of the checks and balances
and can do real harm?!
No the reason for the quotes is to emphasize what you are implying. You are looking for perfect political world and it is my contention that you will never find it. Life is all about making a choice between things. Have you found the perfect car, the perfect house, or the perfect diet? You call it the choice of the lesser of two evils. I call it making the best choice and making an educated decision within the realm of possibilty.
Oh BTW, is using bold fonts ok with you?
Exactly. In politics, common sense trumps principles, morals, conscience, and personal views, etc. because politicians are like poets and taxi drivers....they make their own rules and regulations, they follow no existing laws and statutes, and they operate within their own set of parameters as defined by them at any given time.
And the GOP has about one election cycle left to rely on that as the overriding reason to keep returning them to power. The GOP leadership in Congress is just about moved "off the reservation" completely regarding spending and growing non-military spending and growth of government. How much of the base can the party afford to p*ss off in 2004 in the hopes of gaining the votes of the insipid soccer-moms who will turn on them the second the dems top them with the "...for the children" line of BS?
The party faithful will sit around and bitch about one segment of the right cost them them election instead of wondering why those people who had always been in their camp stayed home instead of going to the polls.
The party without principles. I like it. Has a ring to it.
So if two candidates are running and both are equally repugnant to you, you make an informed decision to vote for one because they are the only ones possible?
This may come as a shock, but the parties were not created to do anything thing for you. They are there to assist their candidates; they are political entities, not municipal or charitable organizations.
If you've got issues, raise them with your elected reps. If you really want to ask that "what have you done for me lately", why not ask them?
Great. Let's reinvent the wheel. Let's add a Third Party to mix so that they can do exactly what the major parties are doing, and further confuse the voters in the process. Why didn't we all think of that?
Thats exactly what I said. If you do not vote for Bush then by default you've voted for Dean.
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