I read the news today – oh boy. USA Today said the Recession was over in June 2009. That’s what the National Bureau of Economic Research said on Monday. Really ? 14 months ago the recession ended ? Did anyone ask the follow up question…”When then did the Depression begin ?” No one seemed to ask this panel of Government paid economists… Hey, how’s that unemployment thing going ? What about the 40% decrease we’ve seen in our home values ? Couple that with the “spend till they drop” policy that the Obamunists have blindly followed and I bet not one out of ten people feel the recession is over.
The fall elections are going to be a referendum on the recession. The one party that has the only sensible solutions is not really a political party at all. It has not even run any candidate under it’s Party name, nor seeks to promote folks that run as a third party candidates in the general elections. It does seek to run the most fiscally conservative candidate in the primary system, challenging the status quo for many Republican candidates. That’s why I’m a Tea Party Republican.
I was a Democrat growing up, voting for Jimmy Carter in my first election. Ay yi yi – what was I thinking ? Jimmy Carter was the very definition and personification of malaise. But, Carters incompetence gave rise to the best President of my lifetime – Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the candidate who uttered the words, “Government is not the solution to our problems, Government is the problem” I switched from a Democrat to a Reagan Republican then – and still count myself as a loyal Republican, but I solidly identify with the Tea Party as it has the most sensible fiscal platform out there.
The Tea Party has been a joyous phenomenon to watch. For years we have been trying to get our Republican party to stop running these Democrat-lite candidates and dressing them up as Republicans. They politely would appear to listen to us then would give us Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain.
The Tea Party has been the baseball bat with a nail driven thru it the Republican leadership has needed applied to their mindset of running “Obama Republicans”, just to reclaim their power base. The core values of the Tea Party are pretty simple. Shrink the Government now. Return individual liberties to the people. Help the business community get back on its’ feet so businesses can hire new employees.
The miserable reality of electing liberal leaning moderate republicans is well known. They vote almost lockstep in concert with the democrats. They have learned how to campaign as if they were in favor of shrinking government then when the election is over they go back to the right side of the government trough to feed.
Liberal friends of mine chided me during the Bush years about the concepts of “Big Government Republican-ism”. They were right. Republicans were not adhering to the principles of smaller government and individual liberty that we all believed in and voted for. They were consumed with doing whatever it took to stay in power, even if core conservative principles had to be discarded. The RINO led Republican Party talked a decent game but their actions were completely different. Their voting records were so close to liberal democrats that any hope of stopping the nanny statism that keeps rolling forward seemed impossible.
Then the Tea Party came to life. Tea parties sprang up all over the country. Ordinary folks who normally were part of the silent majority spoke up loudly - to roll back big government policies. The big government liberals giggled and the big government republicans yawned and both went back to the trough. The Tea Party decided they were not going to make the same mistakes that Ross Perot’s 3rd party made in the early 1990’s. The Tea Party ran candidates that were hard core fiscal conservatives in the Republican primaries. Suddenly the old guard Republican candidates that were not conservatives found themselves losing those primaries.
The President said Monday that the Tea Party should tell him specifically how the Government can be rolled back. I felt like shouting at the radio – “That’s your job” but I didn’t want to yell at two things that are only capable of broadcasting - and are deaf to anyone’s voice. Here are some of the concepts that Conservatives have been saying for years to the hear nothing politicians.
• Reduce Tax Rates. Our corporate income tax rate, is the second highest in the developed world, must be cut to restore U.S. competitiveness.
• Spend Less. Congress needs to cap the annual increase in total government spending, limited to inflation plus population growth. Lawmakers need to establish policies that return federal spending to less than 20% of U.S. GDP.
• Eliminate Government Intervention. The government should end the TARP program. It should also force privatization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Companies should be allowed to fail, and laws and regulations should create no expectation of a future bailout.
I’ll end with one more Reagan quote for the road. ”Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15.”
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