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.
It seems like only yesterday that Freepers from coast to coast were lambasting Clinton for being "poll-driven". Guess they all ran out of lambaste on 1/20/2001.
Exactly right...MUD
The truth is somewhere between the Democrats don't have any issues and the Repbulicans has pacified the opposition....
The Republican's are poised, if they turn out in average numbers, to sweep the Democrats in a number of races.
Predict that the Republicans hold 57-58 Senate Seats, short of the sixty needed; and pick up 10+ in congressional districts.
Just maybe if the lowlife Jeffords hadn't handed the Senate to the RATS, Pres Bush wouldn't have had to compromise so much to get some of his programs through. Even then the Senate is holding up a lot of nominations.
Am sick and tired of conservatives whining they are not getting their way on everything. Elect the RATS and they will get their way on ZERO, ZIP, NADA!
But then I guess some of the "so-called" conservatives on here would rather whine about Pres Bush and what he hasn't done for them then the consider what conservative programs he has supported, but then that doesn't fit the agenda of RATS is "Conservative Clothing" does it? Am sure those same people would love having the House and Senate controlled by the RATS! Probably wouldn't see them posting as much on here.
Then we have the so-called "real conservatives" that vote their one-issue conscience and give power to the RATS in doing so and then love complaining on here.
I personally don't want to hear one person complain if the RATS keep the Senate and take over the House if they didn't vote Republican. They can stuff it as far as I am concerned and keep their moronic comments to themselves after the election.
Wouldn't the RATS love to believe that the midterm outlook for the GOP is bad?
Personally, I'd rather avoid the political equivalent of Pickett's Charge. Fight smart AND hard, not just smart. The parable of the old bull and the young bull is perhaps the most instructive in this circumstance, IMHO.
It's only the fact that the current Democratic leadership is such a complete collection of dirtbags that keeps the GOP alive, given that the difference on domestic policy between the two parties is dwindling to insignificance.
If there were a Henry Jackson or Sam Nunn as an up-front Democrat contender, GWB would be in very serious trouble indeed.
Progress? like the progress written about in the NR article? No Thanks, and the article didn't even mention the brown-shirt wearing "Patriot Act"
Americans deserve better.
Rewarding those who take our votes for granted is wrong.
I also expect a Republican House and President to oppose them. Do you?
It's all about the money....
the bush family gathered 70 million before george was even told he was running.
The direction of the gop is dictated by the really big money, as long as voters hold their noses and vote for the gop candidate regardless, we all get dnc-light leadrership.
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