this admin. isn't republican

[aldian159]

Now that I've gotten your attention, let me clarify:

Republican means small government, state's right.

A 500 Billion dollar deficit is hardly small government, and starving the states as a result of this is hardly state's rights.

The best GOP president (other than Lincoln, he was GOP in that his party's main plank on the 1860 platform was the halt of slavery expansion in the western territories-not abolition, BTW) is TR. However, TR, with his pro-environmentalism and anti-big business is hardly your current GOP.

The GOP today is hardly the GOP of old, and I for one miss the old GOP (I'm 19, so it was the GOP of my history books). The old GOP stood for something that had the potential for success. This current administration is pure crap, hacked away from the roots of its past ideology, tradition, and culture.

[burrowowl]

1. Republican means

Big Defense Budget. Defense now accounts for 50%+. Republicans are for Defense (or actually Offense) to guard their business interests. Look at Latin America: Haiti started out as a Reupblic almost suceeded, Guatemala in the 50's, but the Marines saved United Fruit's interests, Cuba tried too but we did in the Spanish and the Cubans wanting a democracy, Mexico invaded several times, etc. This maladmistration is the Republicans orgasm. Note, they do not say cut defense, they say cut entitlements: SS, Medicare, etc. (and they rob those entitlements' budgets, which we the underclass pay into) cut spending on schools, infrastructure, etc.
Republican means destroying Social Security etc. They have been trying to do it since it was created under FDR!

[Gringo]

2. If you are 19

"Republican means small government, state's right."

It hasn't meant that since long before you were born. When I was a teen and Reagan was president, he slashed essential services and squandered incredible amounts of money on the military - growing overall governement spending at twice the annual rate Clinton did. Now bush is having annual spending increases at FOUR TIMES the rate of the Clinton era. The republican party has been a foul nest of vipers ever since Eisenhower left offfice. Joe McCarthy inaugurated decades of fascistic fervor and hatred within that party that have never subsided. Also, they arre for state's rights ONLY when it serves their purposes, as the 2000 election's SCOTUS ruling showed.

In a nutshell, the GOP has always been less about "small government, less intrusion" than about finding ways to bankrupt all the new deal "socialist" programs, while using the treasury as a cash cow for their corporate friends. Bushco are not new in this regard. They're just more blatant, more egregious, and more incompetent in other areas than their predecessors were. (At least Nixon got a few things accomplished, even if he was a bit of a snake)

The democratic party, on the other hand, has seen better days, too.

[izzie]

4. I think you may see it as I do and I am old and voted GOP until Reagan

Service used to get little if you were in the service and you could hope for a raise if the Dem were in office. SS also was not anything GOP liked but they did all use it when the time came. When I grew up the South was Dem and I recall when the people started to move to the Republican party, right after the Civil Rights movement and Womens movement. The Rep hated all those things like TWA but so much of that has been turned over to business now and is owned but paid for by the tax payers.The gov made sure the country had power to all, not business. Drugs are the same. Dem made sure college could work on such things but once more it goes to corp. Something has happened and the USA does not seem to be the nation out front in the modern world. Maybe our way of life has made us greedy.It is all due us as we are Americans?

[Locke_]

12. A long time ago...

I agree that the republican party hasn't meant that for a long time, and back when they did, they weren't republicans, they were called democrats. Also I agree that the democratic party has seen much better days. I see no reason to vote for Kerry, other than it is a vote for not Bush.

[burrowowl]

3. I highly recommend

Howard Zinn's History of the People of the United States. As for Mexico, a truer view than you usually get and I've got family and personal experience to back it up. The rest is very good too. I rememebr my Grandmother who lived the Great Depression and my parents who were children then.

[belle]

5. Dunno about that, but I do know this...

They aren't "conservative" in any real sense of the word. Conservatives actually want to, you know, conserve things. Other than their own ego (and personal hoard). Traditional, cautious, frugal...These people are none of these things. They are: radicals. Radical destroyers. They're far closer to Attila the Hun than George Will.

[Cat Atomic]

6. Republicans have never been about small government.

They've been for massive corporate welfare (which they like to call defense spending), and cuts in programs and services that benefit the general population directly.

That is really the basis of the republican party, and has been for a very long time. Bush and his administration are most certainly Republicans. They're just more... flamboyant.

[DieboldMustDie]

8. It was Eisenhower who warned us of the...

Military/Industrial Complex. During his administration corporate taxes paid for more than 20% of federal expenditures, compared to less than 10% today. The top income tax rate was 90%. Oh yes! Under Eisenhower the minimum wage, in real terms, rose by nearly 20%. The Republicans have move radically to the right since then.

[snippy]

13. Very true. Bush's deficits are typical of every republican president

since Eisenhower. The republican party also has always been against individual freedom unless it involved making money by exploiting others. The small government bullshit always has been just lies to feed the base.

[Skittles]

16. THANK YOU

the GOP has ALWAYS been the PARTY OF GREED. Always has been, always will be. They simply hide under their "smaller government, fiscally conservative" bullshit in order to con people and thieve the country.

[proud patriot]

7. A Very Astute Observation

I couldn't agree more :hi:

[burrowowl]

11. Eisenhower was a bit of a fluke

Waivered between running as a Repub or Dem. Went to the Repubs.

[JCMach1]

9. Neo Fascist party

would be a better description.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Not, these are totalitarian imperialists...

and they are very much in the grand Republican tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, sad to say.

During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial power, silencing dissent by having opposition newspaper editors incarcerated and their presses smashed, ensuring elections turned out favourably in risky areas by dispatching Federal troops to monitor the proceedings, and doing all sorts of other things Bush and company only WISH they could get away with.

Theodore Roosevelt was one of the founding fathers of American imperialism, stridently beating the drum for American involvement in the Spanish-American War, advocating massive expansion of the US Navy and annexation of Hawaii as a strategic port for projection of power in the Pacific, and annexation of the Phillipines not only as a port, but because of its strategic importance as a source of rope fibre and rubber, as well as control point for a trans-Pacific telegraph cable.

TR and Lincoln both had more redeeming qualities that Bush does, but each in his own way embodied certain aspects of the current Republican leadership.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Of course, TR was also an avid conservationist and trust buster,

so that would put him in a much different league from today's Republicans.

[anti-NAFTA]

15. Both parties seem to have sunk very low.

Let's start with the Republicans:
-They used to be for protectionism, but now they're bought by transnationals and can't wait for America to become raped by Canada, China, Mexico, India and others. The last Republican to take a stand on this issue was pretty much kicked out of his party (i.e. Buchanan).
-They used to be for diplomatic foreign policy centered on pragmatism and not neoconservative idealism. But the '76 primaries between Ford and Reagan signaled the change to the lowest-common denominator Rambo-style foreign policy and the start of the neoconservative oligarchy.
-They are supposed to be for small government (i.e. low taxes, low spending), but since the short terms presidents get allows for what is known as the political business cycle, they can't resist. That's why we need 7 or 8 year terms for presidents.


And now with Democrats:
-Democrats are supposed to protect the less affluent classes, but since American politics is dominated by Wall Street, Bill "NAFTA" Clinton and Al "NAFTA" Gore did more to expand trade than pretty much anyone before them. The job loss that we're experience today could have been prevented if Clinton had listened to Gephardt. But that's what you get when you have Wall Street controlling who wins elections. I don't care what anyone says, Clinton was not a good president; he was not even "the best Republican president" (that honor goes to men like Teddy Roosevelt. Hell, Nixon did more for the working class than Clinton did. Please.).

[Granite]

17. If you ask most Americans

my guess is that they'll tell you that they are "socially moderate and fiscally conservative." This administration is at the opposite extreme - they are fiscally liberal (not in the progressive sense but in the sense that they are more than willing to spend, spend, spend) and socially conservative. That is a recipe for disaster - a big, strong government willing to grow larger in order to enforce its view of a socially conservative order. Scary stuff, and (I think) out of the mainstream for most Americans.