Buck Wild: How the Republican Party betrayed its principles and embraced Big Government

http://www.conservativebookclub.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6934 ^ | Steven Slivinski

[Eric Blair 2084]

True conservatives have watched with dismay in recent years as the Republican Party, once the paragon of fiscal conservatism, has thrown its most cherished principles overboard. Today’s Republican Party has taken up the cause of Big Government with all the gusto of the most profligate Democrat – and Republicans have proven to be even more irresponsible with taxpayer money than the Democrats. In Buck Wild: How Republicans Blew the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government, Stephen A. Slivinski explains how this happened – and how the Republican Party can and must be recaptured for economic responsibility.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Book review forthcoming.

[ConservativeMind]

Conservatives - NOT RINOs - make the party great. The more RINOs in government, the worse it becomes.

[JamesP81]

Conservatives that have a spine make the party great. RINOs and weak kneed conservatives don't.

[ConservativeMind]

Actually, I'd say any conservative who is "weak kneed" is a de facto RINO.

[HitmanLV]

I think the problem is that the electorate expects more services and sees it as somebody else picking up the tab. While some folks are vehement against welfare, for example, they like programs that benefit them - and don't see it as welfare.

The GOP is just giving people what they want.

[A.Hun]

You think that with the "dot-com" bust, the DJ nosedive, a full blown recession, Enron and WorldCom, the attack of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the ten(?) other hurricanes since 2000 to hit, along with higher energy prices, that we might forgive the Repubs for not forcing budget cuts?

You know Delay is an honest guy, and he said they did the best they could. In the house, if you don't get local projects, you don't get re-elected.

It's not that bad when you look at the rise in discretionary spending compared to GDP. The majority is defense spending.

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf#search=%22cbo%20historical%20budget%20%22

[JamesP81]

Actually, I'd say any conservative who is "weak kneed" is a de facto RINO.

Good point.

[Eric Blair 2084]

I appreciate your zeal for Conservatism and Limited Government. That's why I am a Republican. If we're not about Small Government than I'm in the wrong. Wrong website, wrong voting patterns, wrong convictions, wrong everything.

I don't claim that Stephen Slivinski is coming down off the mountain with the tablets here. Hopefully, a conservative with a different point of view is here who can refute what he writes. Let me give you a sampling, while staying under the 200 word limit so I don't get sued for copywright violations:

Let's start in the 1970's.

"But as President, Nixon thoroughly disappointed supporters of limited government.

Nixon mainly believed that it was the role of Republicans to run Big Government better than Democrats. So he spent taxpayer money faster than Lyndon Johnson in many areas--much to the delight of the congressional Democrats. He even created entirely new agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, both of which Republicans would later target as the poster children of a bloated and out of control federal government."
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Now bear in mind that you are talking to someone (me) who went to 2nd grade with a Richard Nixon lunchbox filled with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cookies and juice.

Can somebody a little bit older who lived through that period not watching Sesame Street tell me a different story?

[ConservativeMind]

Well, as someone who went to 2nd grade with a "Welcome Back Kotter" lunch box, I fear I may not have a much deeper background from which to speak, but I believe he was a rather schizophrenic Republican.

From Wikipedia:

As President, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The number of pages added to the Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program, and dramatically improved salaries for U.S. federal employees worldwide. As a party leader, Nixon helped build the Republican Party (GOP), but he ran his 1972 campaign separately from the party, which perhaps helped the GOP escape some of the damage from Watergate. The Nixon White House was the first to organize a daily press event and daily message for the media, a practice that all subsequent staffs have performed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

[Gondring]

Ping (Big Government/Nanny State)