Rose: Where are real conservatives?
By John David Rose
Carolina Morning News
Think About It
Any Republican younger than 50 has probably forgotten what the real Republican Party once stood for. Otherwise they wouldn't stay with the party.
In striking contrast to today's leadership, the GOP was once a fiscally responsible party of intellectual giants: Lincoln, William Howard Taft, (27th president of the United States), his son Sen. Robert Taft (hailed as "Mr. Republican" in the 1940s and '50s), and Sen. Barry Goldwater into the early '80s.
President Taft did not believe in stretching presidential powers. Sen. Robert Taft stood for "our traditional policy of neutrality and non-interference with other nations."
Railing against the failures of the Johnson administration's handling of the Vietnam War, Goldwater could've been talking about Iraq: "Administration failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening wills, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses," Goldwater said.
"Because of this administration we are tonight a world divided - we are a nation becalmed."
The GOP once stood for reverence for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Today it undermines it to promote a narrow religious ideology.
The GOP once stood for fiscal responsibility and against federal deficits. That's really gone by the board under current Republican leadership.
Bush's unprecedented and unjustified pre-emptive war is running on borrowed money. It's borrowed because he gave the money to pay for it away with tax cuts.
The Iraq and Afghanistan adventures have cost $166 billion so far. Now he's asking for another $87 billion to pacify and rebuild Iraq. The money is borrowed from our children who will pay, pay and pay for Bush's gift to the rich. That is, if they can find jobs and make enough money to pay taxes.
"By 51 percent to 41 percent, Americans oppose Bush's request for $87 billion more for Iraq," says the Sept. 26 NBC News poll.
Speaking of unemployment: Instead of pouring the borrowed $87 billion into Iraq, Bush could give $25,000 to each of the 3.3 million Americans now looking for work and still have a few billion left over.
During the Clinton years, federal spending as a percentage of the nation's total economic output dropped from 22 percent at the start of his first term to below 19 percent at the end of his second. Clinton generated billions in surpluses for the treasury.
Under Bush, government spending is up 12.4 percent over the past three years. The on-budget deficit in fiscal 2003 will hit or exceed $570 billion.
And now the Republicans are proposing another $100 million giveaway to corporations that have been stashing their money overseas. They say it will promote manufacturing jobs. Fat chance. It will simply mean a few more millions for already overpaid CEOs.
The federal budget for fiscal 2003 is the largest in U.S. history - $2.2 trillion - and will produce a deficit exceeding $570 billion. Thirty-three percent of that is borrowed money. (Clinton's pre-surplus budgets borrowed just 6 percent.)
The Wall Street Journal asked readers, "How can the government best respond to the growing federal budget deficit?" Twenty-nine percent said, "reverse the tax cuts," 10 percent said "reduce military spending." The Bush administration should "tender their resignations," said one respondent.
Amen to that.
John David Rose is a long-time Hilton Head Islander and political observer.
http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/101003/LOCrose.shtml
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