Posted on 11/29/2012 4:50:07 AM PST by IbJensen
I was once an elected Republican. There isn’t much that the Republican Party has to do with trash collection, but I was a Republican on the Macon, Georgia City Council and I supported trash collection privatization. It wasn’t the Republican thing to do. It was the conservative thing to do. It was the right thing to do. Multiple times it had been tried and multiple times it had saved taxpayer dollars.
There aren’t a lot of Republican positions at the local level. There aren’t a lot of Democrat positions at the local level. There are conservative and liberal positions. There are positions that believe the private sector can do better and positions that believe the public sector can do better.
In Congress, there used to be clear and distinct Republican and Democrat positions. But in the past decade, about the only thing separating the GOP from the Democrats is the rate of spending. Republicans spend less, but they still spend a lot. Oh, and they love babies in utero.
Republicans used to believe in free enterprise, the private sector, and low taxes. They believed in getting government the heck out of the way. They still talk like that, but they don’t seem to actually be operating like that. Senate and House Republicans seem to be in a bidding war to increase revenue in Washington. What’s worse, they are mendacious enough to call it “increasing revenue” instead of “tax increases,” when it amounts to the same thing. The Republican Party of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have taken a party that once believed in starving the beast and transforming it into a party that believes in feeding the leviathan lest the leviathan consume them. They operate out of fear — fear of losing their remaining power, fear of blame, and fear of the unknown.
I am absolutely in favor of simplifying the tax code. I am absolutely in favor of getting rid of loopholes. But I am absolutely opposed to engaging in machinations of the tax code designed to increase spending through closed loopholes and the like. Increased revenue should come through simplifying Washington to spur economic growth. Get Washington out of our lives.
While the Republican Party in Washington says that, it sure seems not to be living up to that. Consider this so called fiscal cliff.
The fiscal cliff is actually a bipartisan compromise that congress critters and their friends in the press have now given a spooky name to scare the American people lest Washington have to take the medicine it prescribed itself. The Republicans were complicit in this arrangement.
Republicans and Democrats punted and punted on the Bush tax cuts and they arranged a debt ceiling increase that would, should a committee designed to fail actually fail, force draconian cuts that both sides could scream about and demand be rejected. So Washington would get a debt ceiling increase, but would not actually have to suffer the pain of cuts. Republicans and Democrats collaborated to design a medicine so vile they could ask the public’s forgiveness if they chose not to take it and design a more sugary medicine instead.
But one way or the other, the medicine must now be taken.
As I’ve noted before, Ed Crane of CATO chronicled way back on November 13, 2000:
Over the past three years the Republican-controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton’s requests by more than $30 billion. The party that in 1994 would abolish the Department of Education now brags in response to Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union Address that it is outspending the White House when it comes to education. My colleagues Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski found that the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate have increased by 13%.
So what the heck does the GOP actually stand for? Right now, they seem to want to be the “responsible” party, but know they’re going to get blamed for whatever happens. They are scared of their own shadow. They are caving, but to what?
I couldn’t tell you. I have no idea what John Boehner and Mitch McConnell’s Republican Party stands for other than the acquisition and maintenance of their own power. They’re Bob Michel without the charm willing to take scraps from the Democrats’ table so long as they can sit on the floor next to it. Their own plans are designed around tactics, not strategy, and tactics designed to avoid as much blame as possible for a mess they were complicit in creating.
I can’t tell you what they stand for anymore.
So as for me and this site, we’re going to continue on with the conservative convictions of the party of Calvin Coolidge — not Reagan. Everybody claims Reagan these days. He has become an idol for the party. Everybody claims him and few even really know much about him any more. While we love Reagan, we will go with Calvin Coolidge who said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” We press on.
He also said, “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.” Today, it seems the GOP is willing to pull down the strong so they don’t get blamed by the weak. They’re going to get blamed anyway. They might as well fight.
But first, they should step out of the way and let the bipartisan compromises all happen. Let them. Let the spending be cut. Let the Democrats raise taxes. Then negotiate for better. As long as the so called fiscal cliff looms the GOP operates from a position of fear, which is a terrible position from which to negotiate.
In short, the GOP should do now what it should have done back in 2011 — shoot the hostage.
There has been absolutely no talk about taking a meat axe to this bloated bureaucracy in DC that is strangling us!
bump for later
:: But first, they should step out of the way and let the bipartisan compromises all happen. ::
The Roberts’ SCOTUS has already shown us that the results of an election trumps even the Constitution. The people voted for this monstrosity to rule their lives, I say let it go; unleash it.
Meanwhile, I’ll sit quietly, guarding the freedoms I have left in my own way.
Semper Second Amendment
The answer is quite simple. They stand for getting reelected and keeping their perks. The remedy is obvious.
Two things make this so: Humans are weak, fallible creatures prone to take the easy, self-serving path; & our system of governance depends on morality & love of country - attributes nearly absent from our culture & totally absent in the political class.
When the most prosperous & free nation the world has ever known knowingly commits fiscal & moral suicide, I have little hope for the human species.
Today's Republican leaders reject the explicit limitations placed upon Federal power by the Constitution and do so in the same manner as do liberal Progressives: by ignoring them. Consequently, when Republicans try to talk about limited government, personal responsibility and financial prudence, they sound like hypocrites - because they mostly are. It is likewise no accident that they often fail to live up to the standards of traditional morality that Democrats have long shunned.
Absent a return to fundamental first principles of Constitutional governance (limited government, free enterprise, strong national defense, secure borders, sound money) and an acceptance of the basic tenets of Judeo-Christian morality (individual responsibility, respect for Life, and the primacy of the family among them) the GOP will continue to languish.
The problem is this:
The democrats looked at the electorate, and went with Americans. Granted they did that by lying and fakery, but they went with Americans.
The GOP looked at the same electorate, and fired a bunch of people sending their jobs overseas.
What is wrong with this picture?
Like all politicians, they stand for re-election and only re-election.
The Republicans aren’t sure what they stand for either. And if you don’t know where you stand, you are almost certain to fall.
Some existing American jobs are being eliminated in favor of foreign employment. But brand new jobs are also being created in places other than America and new production facilities intentionally located in other regions. Why? Five main reasons:
1. Employment costs (salaries & mandated benefits) are far higher in the US than anywhere else. Labor unions, with their sclerotic work rules and mandates have helped to chase manufacturing out of the US.
2. Regulations - the cost of compliance with US regulatory expenses has exploded for many industries in less than 20 years. This includes not only direct costs (such as facility and equipment upgrades) but legal expenses and the payment of fines and penalties.
3. Taxes. American businesses now pay the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Even Japan has cut its rates.
4. Market Co-location. Most people miss this - why are companies building manufacturing facilities in India, Indonesia, Costa Rica or Singapore? It's not just about cheap labor - it's about logistics. Increasingly, the markets for these goods and services are not the United States or Europe. They are local. There are growing, educated middle class populations in many parts of the world. They have money to spend and want to buy locally-made goods, just as Americans do. And now they can.
5. International competition for capital. Other countries are becoming more bottom-up, market-oriented. We're becoming increasingly top-down, government-controlled. Which model is going to better attract investment?
I know that Obama (and most Democrats) are never going to understand the nature of these issues. But I expect conservatives to get it. Want to make America hospitable for manufacturing again? For starters: get government out of the way, and stop punishing those who succeed.
“There has been absolutely no talk about taking a meat axe to this bloated bureaucracy in DC that is strangling us!”
That’s right...the silence is deafening...most of them are a bunch of self-serving egotists, yes, and cowards.
They need Jesus!
Make cuts to government until the latter matches the former without having to resort to chicanery like "penumbras and emanations".
Anyone supporting the above is a "conservative". Anyone against it is a bigger government Socialist.
And yes, it really is just that easy.
The Republicans play the role the Washington Generals play for the Harlem Globetrotters.
” These souless, gutless politicians would rather the country be destroyed than that the government have to tighten its belt. They would rather the country die in the long run than that they have to suffer in any way in the short term. They are despicable cowards, and deserve all the blame they will eventually reap”
When D.C. became the place for CAREER politicians, it became
our enemy. Vote 90% of these ba$tards out.
What in the world are you talking about? Big Business CEOs are split between R & D, and I've seen nothing that suggests that Democratic CEOs are any less inclined to look for cheap labor.
This is a Dem talking point, and nothing to do with the GOP as a political party.
Nor talk of the tax of regulatory & legal burdens that are nearly as costly to any free economy as a tax.
Washington need not give up what it calls revenue to reduce their burden. But all of it comes down to power, their power over us is the currency of their realm, it is that power which they so consistancly find themselves unable and unwilling to give up.
Except thou State nullification I know not how we can force them to do otherwise. Clearly federal elections have no consequences. They have with our hard earned fruits bought their own reelection(with 90%+ reelection rate).
According to Politics1, Erickson is floating his name as a potential primary opponent to Sen. Chambliss for 2014.
Let’s not forget Congress Critters are also Takers: They get a hefty pension for their “work”.
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