Posted by
JayPeriod on Monday, October 08, 2007 10:46:10 AM
During the 2006 election cycle, many were making a big deal of election after election where Democrats were beating Republicans, and the mainstream media wanted us to believe it was all about the War. If that were the case, though, Joseph Lieberman would not have won in Connecticut. In reality, the real issue was runaway spending.
Lower taxes and controlled spending have been a staple of the Republican platform for quite some time. Ronald Reagan ran on both and won landslide elections, twice. The Republican Revolution of 1994 that swept Republicans into power in both houses of Congress for the first time in decades was fueled by Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, whose cornerstone was fiscal responsibility and lower taxes. Of course, they differed from the current stock of GOPers in that they actually lived up to those promises.
Most people see through the Democratic (read: socialist) agenda of higher taxes. While they claim to be taxing the "rich", what they are really doing is making someone pay someone else's bills. Redistribution of wealth never sits well with the general public. When people like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are telling us that the rich need to pay more, we have to wonder what these multi-millionaires mean.
Most rational economists will tell you that a nation cannot tax its way out of debt or recession. In contrast, they must cut taxes, cut programs that don't affect the majority of the populace and create incentives for small and medium businesses. As Reagan proved, our economy will not succeed if businesses cannot profit.
While the Bush tax cuts in recent years have done well to stimulate the economy, if we are to sustain it, we must continue to make these cuts. In addition, though, we cannot allow government spending to get out of control. That is what cost the Republican party control of both houses of Congress. The American people saw that they were not fiscally responsible, so they wanted change. Unfortunately, the Democrat party is not the place to look.
If the Republicans are to regain seats in Congress, and maintain the White House, they will need to return to the idea of fiscal responsibility. Each candidate is touting tax cuts, on extreme contrast to Democrats, but they are not impressing the public with spending cuts. On the other hand, Democrats are talking about expanding government spending to record amounts, which will hamstring the economy and take the tax rate of average people beyond what they can endure.
We must make sure candidates understand that out of control spending, pork especially, must be cut. Programs that do not benefit the majority of the populace such as the National Endowment for the Arts, public tv and radio and other such programs, must be cut from the budget completely. The scope of government involvement and funding of education and health must be reduced and those responsibilities placed back on local governments where better decisions are made. These are solid Conservative values. If the Republican party will not re-engage them, they may have outlived their usefulness.