Posted on 12/30/2013 3:48:05 AM PST by Kaslin
As 2013 comes to a close, it’s as good a time as any to do some national soul searching.
Polls show that three out of four Americans say the nation is on the wrong track. Disapproval ratings of our president are lodged above fifty percent.
Clearly, whatever was generating the glow that got the most left-wing president in American history elected twice is starting to fade.
Despite the considerable human experience from around the world that socialism does not work, and the considerable experience in our own country that human freedom and capitalism does work, many Americans bought the left-wing sweet talk and sugar-coated promises from Barack Obama that this time things would be different.
As Obamacare socialism implodes, as every conservative observer knew from day one it would, the American people need alternatives, not just to how we get our health care, but to the destructive left-wing vision that has gripped this country over recent years.
And here, the Republican Party leadership needs to shoulder its share of the blame.
Nature abhors a vacuum. It is not enough to know what doesn’t work. Citizens need to hear, with clarity, what does work, and this can only happen through courageous, principled leadership.
Leadership, by this standard, from the opposition party, the Republican Party, has been woefully lacking.
Two recent surveys point to the deep confusion among the American people.
A Gallup poll last week reported that 72 percent of Americans identify “big government” as “the biggest threat to the country in the future,” the highest percentage since Gallup began reporting this in 1965.
Yet, when asked in a Pew Research Center survey, also reported last week, which parts of the federal budget should be scaled back to deal with the deficit, most Americans do not want to touch what is the biggest problem – entitlement spending.
Social Security and Medicare take 36 percent of the federal budget compared to 18 percent that goes to defense spending. And projections show entitlement spending rapidly growing to take an increasingly larger chunk of the federal budget.
Yet 69 percent of Americans are opposed to taking on Social Security and Medicare to deal with the deficit while only 40 percent are opposed to cutting the defense budget. Even a majority of Republicans – 62 percent – don’t want to touch Social Security and Medicare.
When most Americans feel the biggest threat facing us is big government, yet they do not want to take on the biggest factors driving the growth of government, we have got a problem.
This is a problem that can only be addressed through leadership. And at this writing, that leadership is absent.
Not only absent, but things are moving in the wrong direction.
The Wall Street Journal reports this week, “Republican leaders and their corporate allies have launched an array of efforts aimed at diminishing the clout of the party’s most conservative activists….”
Americans desperately need leaders today who will be honest that we cannot go on with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid structured as they are.
Ideas abound how we can get better and cheaper health care through genuinely free markets. But it will never happen without leaders willing to say it.
And we need leaders who are willing to be honest about the moral collapse of our country. Societies without virtue and personal responsibility cannot bear the burdens of freedom and reap its benefits. Can a free country really live with almost half its babies born to unwed mothers?
We got to where we are today as result of political leaders who thought American freedom is on automatic pilot.
It’s not. Freedom requires eternal vigilance.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner should be on alert that conservatives have just begun to fight. We’re hanging out the Help Wanted sign for a new generation of principled, conservative leaders.
Good luck with that. I no longer have confidence that anyone in the GOP has principles. They are all out for personal gain.
Assuming that social security and medicare can’t be touched and that defense spending should maintain a level that makes us victorious in any conceivable war(s), then that means 54% of the budget shouldn’t be touched. That leaves us 46% of the budget that can be touched.
That is roughly half....a considerable amount well over a trillion.
As always, when doing a household budget in belt-tightening times: what is ignorant, extravagant, what is nice but not necessary, what is painful to lose, and what is absolutely necessary.
Endowment for the arts, planned parenthood, earned income credits for kids living in Mexico are all ignorant. Disability for able bodied workers is ignorant. ObamaCare is ignorant/extravagant...all those IRS agents included.
“Leadership, by this standard, from the opposition party, the Republican Party, has been woefully lacking.”
And therin lies the problem. So many conservatives, including this author, falsely believe that the gop wing of the uniparty functions as some sort of opposition party. It does not. The gop wing of the uniparty functions as something of a political roach motel for conservatives. Conservatives might go in, but nothing of conservative substance comes out.
Conservatism as a political philosophy in the US is doomed so long as it looks to the gop wing of the uniparty to do anything other than obstruct and obfuscate.
I think all of us here, were well aware he was a radical left winger, before he was elected the first time.
That is for sure
blah, blah, blah
Don’t be so smug, they all suck. I’m done with the GOP.
Including so-called conservatives who come up short in their history and fly off to commie circus funerals.
They are Both the Party of Government.
Even when some conservative leaders are available, the American people are still stuck on McC, Lamar!, Graham, etc.
There is no one with any principles left
They are all power hungry craven megalomaniacs
They put on a persona like they put on a costume
If only there was someone who believed in their heart and lived it
like Sarah Palin
She courageously lives it even though depraved idiots attack her all the time
Scott Walker.
“There is no one with any principles left...”
Sure there are. There are plenty of people with conservative principles left. It’s just that precious few are involved in partisan politics because anyone with 2 neurons firing can see that the we have a one party system and conservatives need not apply.
Plus if you think about it, any true conservative is going to be doubly reluctant to run for political office. Because elective office by it’s nature involves use of governmental force to achieve political objectives, something that most conservatives are loathe to do.
find me some, I want to meet them
“The GOP runs off anyone who thinks that statism isn’t the solution and many of their supporters happily chime in to run them out.”
Yup. The gop faction is also parroting the conventional wisdom and saying that they’ve got 2014 “in the bag.” With or without conservatives. So they’re taking the opportunity to try to run conservatives out.
Truth is they don’t have it in the bag, and it wouldn’t much matter anyway given that there isn’t any significant difference between the ‘rat and gop faction. But they’re sure going to use the excuse as an opportunity to drive conservatives out.
The marriage between conservatives and the gop has been an unhappy one and the gop can’t wait for the long overdue divorce.
That’s too easy.
Go to a gunshow. Look at any non-NRA gun rights organization. There are plenty of conservatives out there.
So true. How many GOP pols ran as Tea Partiers and soon began goosestepping with the uniparty?
Star Parker: Citizens need to hear, with clarity, what does work . . .
What demonstrably worked well from 1789 to 1913 was divided government, a federal government. Our experiment with a democratized senate and congress has been a disaster. It was only a matter of time before an Obama stepped in to consolidate power among a small number of political elites.
“What demonstrably worked well from 1789 to 1913 was divided government, a federal government. Our experiment with a democratized senate and congress has been a disaster. It was only a matter of time before an Obama stepped in to consolidate power among a small number of political elites.”
Amen. But I believe dear leader is just the start.
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