Granite Status: The party of Reagan? RNC, newspaper disagree

JUST LIKE RON? The Republican Party’s national chairman tried to douse a political wildfire yesterday by assuring The Union Leader that “the party of George W. Bush is very much the party of Ronald Reagan.”

While the Status was vacationing last week, RNC Chair Ed Gillespie stopped in to chat with McQuaid and two top editors. The visit, while friendly, resulted in three editorials critical of the new GOP. One charged that Gillespie had “said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of government are over.”

That editorial, published on Sunday, caught the attention of national talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who spent considerable time talking about it during his post-holiday Tuesday show. In phrases taken from his monologue, he wrote on his Web site that The Union Leader’s editorial had “taken the wind out of my sails” and left him wondering if his 15 years of fighting for conservatism had been “flushed down the toilet.”

“Yes, Rush, it’s true,” The Union Leader responded in an editorial yesterday (EDITORIAL). Gillespie, it said, had defined “fiscal responsibility” as increasing the federal budget at a slower rate than the Democrats.

He had been asked why Bush and the GOP-led Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at “an alarming rate,” and why the party has “embraced” expansion of the federal role in education, agriculture and entitlement programs. The editorial quoted Gillespie as saying, “Those questions have been decided” because the public wants it.

Limbaugh noted on his Web site that he was told by a Gillespie assistant after the Tuesday show that “because Ed would not commit to ‘shutting down the Department of Education’ or ‘absolutely rejecting a drug benefit,’ the editorial page editors took it as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.”

“Well . . . yes,” McQuaid responded yesterday. “They’re right. We do take that as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.” He noted Gillespie did not deny the accuracy of the editorials.

McQuaid said Gillespie had been asked to name “any area or agency where they were looking to dismantle, and I don’t think he came up with one.” He said the discussion left him asking, “Let me get this straight — these guys are for bigger government at a slower rate that the Democrats?” McQuaid said previous party chairs “would have been vigorous and said, ‘No, we’re for cutting spending.’ Instead this guy’s attitude was — and he was very pleasant about it — that ‘the people have made it clear they are for a federal government role in education and for prescription drugs, and, therefore, the Republican Party is for it because the people are for it.’” McQuaid said he was disappointed by Gillespie’s view of Bush’s GOP.

A Gillespie letter to the editor arrived about midday yesterday. “Since President Bush came into office,” he wrote, “Republicans have rejected $1.9 trillion in additional budget spending proposed by Democrats while passing $350 billion in tax relief just his year.”

The Bush budget the GOP Congress “worked to pass” this year “limits spending growth to 4 percent, the same amount as family income,” Gillespie wrote, while non-defense discretionary spending is up by 2 percent.

Gillespie wrote that because efforts to eliminate the federal education department were defeated, “the issue is settled.” But, he said, “this administration has applied conservative principles to the now-settled federal role in education, a point you neglected to mention” in the editorials.

Gillespie wrote that he also pointed out at the meeting that on Medicare, “our choices” are to have a program “where government makes decisions and delivers care or a market-oriented approach where patients make choices and private providers deliver the care.”

McQuaid said Gillespie’s letter settled nothing. “The GOP has settled on big government in education, is spending more, but slower than the Democrats, and is expanding government in Medicare,” he said. “Nowhere in his letter or his meeting was there any word of cutting or eliminating or reducing the government.”

Also at the meeting was state GOP Chairman Jayne Millerick. Smart woman that she is, Jayne’s not taking sides in this one. She did say she thought it was “key” that Gillespie made the point in his letter about non-defense discretionary spending being up by only 2 percent.

“I don’t want to judge what the editors should say,” Millerick said. “But the tax cut was an important piece of the economic puzzle that the President and Republican leaders led through Congress.”

I can't see voting for that.

"Limbaugh noted on his Web site that he was told by a Gillespie assistant after the Tuesday show that “because Ed would not commit to ‘shutting down the Department of Education’ or ‘absolutely rejecting a drug benefit,’ the editorial page editors took it as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.”

“Well . . . yes,” McQuaid responded yesterday. “They’re right. We do take that as an abandonment of Reaganesque smaller government.” He noted Gillespie did not deny the accuracy of the editorials.
"

huh? so this whole hub bub is based on what their interpretation of his words are? give me a break.

So why, then, did Bush sign CFR? Why did he sign a bloated Farm Bill? Why did he dump even more money into the Dept. of Ed. then even the 'RATS were asking for? Why is he in favor of "prescription drugs for seniors?"

This ain't about Gillespie. Its about where the Stupid party is going.

Unfortunately, I have to pay attention to this. It directly affects my wallet.

This ain't about Gillespie. Its about where the Stupid party is going.

Ok. So let's beat up on Bush for being a liberal.

Next, then, let's start supporting a true Conservative alternative to Bush from the Dem 9 Dwarves. Hmmmm. None there?

How bout a conservative (viable or not) from anywhere?

(crickets)

BushCo is correct on the primary point. The public thinks the government needs to be spending more on them. That's the primary problem here, and no amount of bully-pulpitting will be able to change that, by Bush or Gillespie or DeLay or etc.

I'm with you Sauro. I feel like some character in an Ayn Rand novel who is forced to decide if I take the lesser of two evils (and vote for Bush) or stand up for what I really believe in (and other than the Bush Doctrine and Tax Cuts, he's done nothing I agree with) and not vote at the Presidential election.

I run around with a group of conservatives and to a tee, we're all more than a little concerned about the direction of the R-Party. Some of us have decided already to not vote for him again and I'd wager that all over the country, true fiscal and social conservatives are going to do the same.

It's a shame really. I had high hopes for this President.

Oh, and I think Gillespie was speaking from his heart in a relatively Liberal State (Northern NH's excluded of course)and is trying to do damage control with Rush. We've all seen liberalism become so fractured and because the Demo's are trying to keep them all under their umbrella you have a party that's coming unglued and will continue to do so over the next ten years. Unfortunately, the party that I have always held dear and voted for exclusively since I had the right (Bush I) is imploding from the same inclusiveness disease. Where's the heart & mind changing? I'm discouraged. Maybe it's time for a true conservative party. Libertarian ain't it.

"Some of us have decided already to not vote for him again and I'd wager that all over the country, true fiscal and social conservatives are going to do the same."

You are right, unfortunately. I will not vote for Bush again - he has been the biggest disappointment of my voting life - and, in my opinion, he is nothing more than Democrat-lite.

I have felt for some time as if I am living in Atlas Shrugged. No more will I vote for the lesser of the evils. I live in California. We have become a socialist state and I see the rest of the country catching up fast. God help us.

There are third party options.

I have had concerns about the GOP since before the Republican "takeover" in 1996. I voted for Howard Phillips in 1996 and 2000. I could not vote for BobDull or W.

On this forum i regularly get castigated by infantile people that do not understand voting on principle no matter what.

Don't sit out the vote. Vote your conscience.

Rectitudine Sto. Sauropod.

Your analysis is correct. However there are real conservatives that have run in the past. Don't know who the Constitution party is putting up for '04.

When the public finds out that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, democracy is dead (paraphrasing, who said that?).

A lot of the public are used to sucking off the gubbermint teat. They never lost their milk teeth.

If you are saying that only northern NH is conservative I would say you do not understand NH. THe northern tier of the state has so few voters and population that the last general elections, it was a landslide for Republicans at 100%, could not have been achieved without the votes of the southern tier. The seacoast is actually the most conservative area of the state and it is the fastest growing as well as long as Durham (UNH) and Portsmouth is removed from the equation. Although Portsmouth is leaning more conservative lately as property tax issues are hitting them hard in the wallet.

What NH is not is a Republican voting block for the encumbent. Buchanan and Perot ran well here because of nationalistic pride and pragmatism.

Our new Governor, Benson, has followed in the tradition of past Republican Governors by halting all discretionary spending and requiring that department heads cut their budgets. He also has a libertarian view of many government functions as his predecessor, Republican Steve Merrill did.

NH is not like NY or MA in that although we as a body are among of the most highly educated in the nation we are also among the most conservative and because of this we attract the same. I believe it is the state constitution, and values that continue this tradition.

McQuaid of the MUL is just examining the Republicans at the national level and comparing that to NH. It is not the same.
Without saying it I wonder if the GOP and the RNCs effort in removing our senator Bob Smith has anything to do with this examination.

Now we gave them the Congress and the White House, and now they say no one supports conservatism.

OH PUHLEASE!!! Dream on. "Congress" is not owned by the Republicans. You know that. As long as the Pubs have less than 60 votes, they no more control progress in the Congress than the Dims control regress.

Sorry bud, but "the people" are split 50/50, and the founding fathers set up a government that tends to gridlock in such a situation.

Conservatism HAS NOT won the day, nor will it likely ever in relatively prosperous times. Russell Kirk explained in "The Conservative Rout," later renamed, that Conservatism is bound to be locked into a terminal losing struggle with activist liberals by its nature.

Just like the heroes at the Alamo were fighting a mere defensive action, their critical delays provided time for Houston's later victory.

So now, instead of fighting the only fight we can (impede the unrelenting forward progress of liberals,) you throw down arms and sacrifice James Bowie to Santa Anna.

You're so short-sighted you think your own nose is the extent of the universe.

I run around with a group of conservatives and to a tee, we're all more than a little concerned about the direction of the R-Party. Some of us have decided already to not vote for him again and I'd wager that all over the country, true fiscal and social conservatives are going to do the same.

It's a shame really. I had high hopes for this President.

Spot on correct...

Cheers.

Re: #16.

It's not "infantile" to fight a retreating action. You all seem to think that voting for the lesser of two evils is automatically defeat.

I ask you to consider the mere possibility that you may be wrong.

By not delaying the slide, you are in fact accelerating the establishment of a completely Socialist State. Nobody less than a true Ronaldus Magnus could actually carry another revolutionary conservative mantle.

Newt Gingrich was NO Reagan in 1994, and W is no Reagan today.

But precipitating a Howard Dean or Hitlery administration by deserting is a real great assistance to the leftists.

Name me one Ronald Reagan today. Name me one TRUE IDEAL conservative that can capture the imagination of the populace.

When the public finds out that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, democracy is dead (paraphrasing, who said that?).

Hear, hear! --Alexander Tytler, 18th century Scottish historian, quoted shortly after America won her independence from England.

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