Posted on 05/29/2002 8:44:38 AM PDT by Zack Nguyen
Why should Republicans bother to vote GOP next November 5? Inexplicably, President Bush and congressional Republicans are giving their party base myriad reasons to go fishing on Election Day.
Republicans and Democrats have proven to be pigs in a bipartisan pen on pork-barrel spending. While some Republicans still treat taxpayers' dollars with reverence, too many more stand gleefully at the trough, snout-by-snout, with their Democratic colleagues.
This Congress is set to hike federal spending by 15 percent over just two years, more than quadruple the inflation rate. Most of this does nothing to fight terrorism.
On May 13, Bush signed a $191 billion farm bill that boosts agriculture subsidies by 80 percent. Congress even included $100 million to provide rural consumers "high-speed, high-quality broadband service." The Heritage Foundation estimates that this 10-year bill will cost the average U.S. household $180 in new taxes annually.
Bush's education department budget grows from $35.75 billion in 2001 (when he arrived) to a projected $57 billion in 2005. That is a four-year, 59.5 percent increase in federal school outlays. Bush's Leave No Child Behind initiative promotes testing and higher standards, but does little to advance school choice.
Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform law. It treats the disease of legal bribery with a prescribed overdose. As if there were no First Amendment, it will restrict political activists from purchasing ads critical of political incumbents within 60 days of elections.
Bush dropped an anvil on free-marketeers this spring when he imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported steel and a 27 percent tax on Canadian softwood lumber. This has created throbbing headaches among world leaders who have grown weary of Bush's self-mocking free-trade rhetoric.
Bush has applauded a Senate bill by liberal Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico and arch-liberal Democrat Paul Wellstone of Minnesota that would force company health plans to insure mental illness and physical ailments equally. Costs will soar as employers underwrite medical care for anxiety atop angina.
Enough.
A popular conservative president should steer Congress starboard. A May 14 - 15 Fox News poll of 900 adults found Bush's job approval at 77 percent (+/- 3 percent). Alas, like his father (who achieved 90 percent favorability after the Persian Gulf War), G. W. Bush guards his political capital like an heirloom rather than invest it for even greater gains.
When Democrats smeared appellate-court nominee Charles Pickering as a racist, Bush, for instance, should have held a press conference with Pickering and his prominent black supporters from Mississippi. As Charles Evers, the brother of slain civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, said: Pickering "was standing up for blacks in Mississippi when no other white man would." Bush avoided such bold action. A thousand cuts later, Pickering's nomination fatally hemorrhaged in the Senate Judiciary Committee last March.
Bush could have enhanced the prospects for petroleum exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He could have invited local Eskimos to the Rose Garden and let them explain how oil development would lift them from poverty. Better yet, Bush could have taken the White House press corps to ANWR to unmask its potential oil acreage as a barren mosquito farm. Bush avoided the ANWR fray, thus clinching that proposal's Senate demise.
Beyond speaking softly in his bully pulpit, Bush never has touched his veto pen. Had he threatened to reject some of this absurd legislation, fence-sitting GOP congressmen would have yielded and defeated (or at least improved) these bills. Absent Bush's leadership, they climbed atop the gilded bandwagon rather than fall on their laissez-faire swords. Republicans should worry that their demoralized stalwarts will do what they did in the last midterm election: Stay home.
The proportion of self-described conservatives at the polls fell from 37 percent in 1994 to 31 percent in 1998, Voter News Service reports. Frustrated with a "Republican Revolution" turned free-spending self-parody, the party faithful sat on their hands just enough to cost Republicans five House seats.
If they don't reverse this parade of white flags, Washington Republicans similarly may shrink or lose their House majority and dash their plans to capture the Senate — not because they advanced their free-market principles but because they betrayed them and thus surrendered their claim to power.
First, this isn't just about "nailing" Clinton. This is about a whole party (the democRAT party) gone bad. It is about dozens if not hundreds of high level democRATS who KNOWINGLY committed serious crimes. Most of those people are either STILL in government, the media or doing the dirty work of their party. Ignoring them isn't going to make them go away ... it is only going to make them stronger ... bolder.
Maybe before September there were investigations, maybe there still are.
Second, there is NO indication that investigation ever did or are taking place. NONE. All there has been are signs that the Bush administration is "movin on". You can't name one major investigation (certainly one the size that this one should be) that has remained secret for long. By now (more than a year later) there would be SOME sign that it was happening. Some of those suspected of crimes would have lawyered up and their lawyers would have gone to the press and friendly senators to scream foul. Some of those abused by the Clinton machine would has let the rest of us know that something was up. We'd have heard that there were documents and computers being suppoenoed and about the efforts of democRATS to stop that. But there has been nothing like that in the news. No ... its wishful thinking to say that investigations have or are taking place. And its wishful thinking to claim they will take place before September when all the signs point to the opposite. You don't make someone who is being or going to be investigated for crimes as serious as selling out this country for campaign cash a diplomat representing the country.
It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of concrete proof to nail clinton.
They've had more than a year to start. They haven't even started. And as far a concrete proof is concerned, you won't get it if you don't even investigate. I suggest they start by exhuming the bodies of Foster and Brown. If Foster has two bullet wounds or a wound someplace other than what was described by the Clinton administration ... it doesn't get any more "concrete". If Brown has a bullet wound, it doesn't get any more "concrete". Or how about investigating the Riady non-refund? Riady either lied (and should loose his plea agreement) or several high level officials in the democRAT party lied when they said the illegal contributions had been returned (and should now be indicted or in jail). All three of those cases are easily and quickly investigateable. NO EXCUSES.
But the issue is gaining control of the senate and keeping control of congress, and severing any power the liberals have.
No. The issue is whether the Republicans are less corrupt than the democRATS? Whether they investigate will tell us.
Until we have the liberals out of power, we will never be able to create any change, we will never be able to uphold the constitution, because the liberals want us to be socialist/communist nation.
EXCUSES EXCUSES. NOTHING is stopping Bush and Ashcroft from investigating. THEY control the DOJ and the FBI. To claim that liberals are stopping Ashcroft and Bush from doing their jobs and their duty is disingenious spin. Its the same delay, delay, delay tactic used by the democRATS.
They will fight with every dirty trick to make it happen. We can not let it happen.
But the GOP has already demonstrated it doesn't have the will to stop it from happening. Why ... the RNC didn't even mention the blockbuster issue of the Riady non-refund on their website. Bush approves new laws on campaign finance reform while ignoring the ones already in place that were clearly broken. You don't fix a government by making the leaders and political parties immune from the law. That is the road to tyranny and nothing else.
Zell Miller (D-GA) -- 60
Nelson (D-NE) -- 56
John Breaux (D-LA) -- 48
Now for our most liberal Senators from the Republican Party:
Susan Collins (R-ME) -- 64
Olymia Snowe (R-ME) -- 60
Alen Spectre (R-PA) -- 56
John McCain (R-AZ) -- 68
You can now see that only Zell Miller beats Spectre for voting Conservative by 4 points and no one else on the Republican side! And folks on here consider Miller a "true" conservative. Well you and I both know that Miller is not a conservative and this says it all. My two cents worth!
What's that saying I've heard......"Republicans eat their own."........seems to be happening right here and now.....and YOU are the eater. WHEN in the last 200 years has a third party gotten a majority vote in anything? HUH? WHEN? I give up. Too hard to explain anymore.
LOL, and be replaced by what? Hmm, how come you aren't berating the founding fathers for basically setting up a two party system.
Like it or not that is our system. The 100% crowd will never get what they want, the only thing they get is to whine about how their 100% individual agendas aren't being implemented.
That's my gut analysis, for what it's worth. Pass it on if you think it appropriate. Now I am going out to pull weeds, since I can't pull any weeds off this forum. Ha!
Blah, blah, blah, same old, same old from AWW. It is amazing how you third partiers can delude yourselves.
Yep, vote for the real conservatives, they need our support and it sends a message that they can and should win and stand by their principles.
"The preceding was a non-paid advertisement from Idiots Are Us! "
Be careful what you ask for idiot.
Ummm... Aren't we fighting a war at the moment? Our military needs a virtual rebuilding, right? And Daschle is the illegitimate Senate Leader, correct?
Are you mad at Jim Jeffords?
I've seen lots of people assert that conservatives voted in HUGE numbers for Bush and the GOP in 2000. I would like to see some documented evidence supporting that hypothesis before I accept it. Because if we truly maxed out the conservative vote in 2000 (i.e. that's the best we can do), and we still a.) lost the popular vote; b.) lost seats in the Senate; and c.) lost seats in the House, then the GOP has very little chance of being nudged back to the right anytime soon.
The only thing the 1%'ers ever accomplish is to help elect someone far worse to their core issues. The left-wingers repeated that historical fact with Nader in last election.
"Sad as it is to say maybe the Republican party needs to die a quick death. There is little to distinguish them from their brother Democrats now. Hopefully a coalition of freedom loving people could raise a new party from the ashes. One that really was conservative versus the one that now falsely claims to be."
To which you replied:
"What's that saying I've heard...... "Republicans eat their own." ........ seems to be happening right here and now..... and YOU are the eater. WHEN in the last 200 years has a third party gotten a majority vote in anything? HUH? WHEN? I give up. Too hard to explain anymore."
Are you saying that IF the GOP did indeed die a quick death that the Dems would forever win because there would be a void? The GOP as currently constituted does not do enough to differentiate itself from the Dems. Yes, there are differences, but mostly in speed and degree, not in overall philospy.
Look at where we are now. The GOP can barely defend the positions that the Dems held in the '60's and now we are outspending them. Kennedy was for a huge tax cut and HHH was is favor of private ownership of guns and both were defenders of freedom even though they were bleeding heart liberals. What we 'GOP bashers' are fighting for is a party that will fight for us. Is that too much to ask?
If you lose the election, you do not have any effect on legislation or policy.
It's that simple. The caller to Mr. Hannity has a point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.