What should be the planks upon which the Republican Party should build a government? What should Republicans stand for? Seriously.
There's much complaining about losing the special elections and bemoaning McCain's awful "global warming" speech, so if we're constructing a party upon what do we build?
Thursday, May 15, 2008
What SHOULD Republicans Stand for?
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7 comments:
Victoria: Besides McCains "global Warming" speech, in which he is cozying up to AlGoreand his nonsense perhaps trying to share in Gore's raking in of seemingly endless amounts of cash, you neglected to mention McCain's stomach-turning fawning over Teddy the Useless.
We should build a Republican Party on the shoulders of giants.
Genuine freedom of speech which means no more "hate crime" laws, no more campus speech codes, no more McCain-Feingold style legislation giving the media carte blanch to potificate up to and during an election while the rest of us have to shut up during the last bit.
Genuine freedom of religion in which the 1st Amendment is viewed as a constraint upon the state's involvement in ALL religion and a tool for the encouragement of religious freedom instead of the one-note-samba of the Establishment Clause. This means that we talk about the First Amendment as if it reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" instead of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".
Respect for a plain reading of the 2nd Amendment which guarentees the individual right to keep and bear arms. Prohibiting the possession of certain weapons remains in the spirit of the law but our current gun control laws are unconstutional madness. Would you believe that a felon cannot be constitutionally required to register a gun? It's true because registering a gun would force him to admit to the commission of a crime, violating his 5th Amendment rights.
The ending of all farm subsidies. Since the 1930s at least, farmers have been paid not to grow food and while people are starving all over the world, our government destroys food to keep prices high. This is madness and frankly immoral in the worst way. The Republican Party should stand against it proudly.
The curtailing of penalizing people for success. The more you earn, the more the state gets to take from you at the point of a gun and then it gets to raid your investment funds and increase the price of your gasoline and take its pound of flesh out of the production of any product and have its bite out of your estate... and the list goes on to a terrifying degree. This is frankly unconstitutional as it, by no definition of the phrase, promotes the general welfare.
As to welfare, the Republican Party we make should stand against the welfare state, the evil dole that FDR attacked as a narcotic. He also announced that the government must quit this business of relief because he recognized that it was a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The more we fight poverty with government money, the worst off the poor become. A government that can only give a destitute person a dime for every dollar spent has no business trying to help people. They ought to be handing it over to charities that can give 70 cents per dollar to the poor... and relieving our tax burden so we can pour money into these charities.
Our Republican Party should stand against attempts by all branches of government to oppress the majority in favor of the minority. A state supreme court giving the people of California the finger over gay marriage should never happen and we should never be in a situation where the only way for the people to make their own laws is to change their constitution. This is clear opression of a vast majority in favor of a miniscule minority, a minority that holds each and every fundamental right as the majority does. Moreover, affirmative action laws are clearly a form of racism and sexism that is inexcusable in any society built upon the ideal that all men are created equal. Lastly, this Republican Party ought to cause the government to more carefully craft antidiscrimination laws so that wildly absurd categories like "gender identity" aren't protected and a gun isn't put to the head of any business that needs to be selective when hiring to avoid harm to its ability to do business (i.e. a Christian bookstore shouldn't be armtwisted into hiring a guy who demands to be allowed to dress in a bikini and short skirt for work).
The Republican Party should stand for the concept that a government that governs least governs best. The Department of Energy doesn't produce a single friggin' drop of oil or watt of power but we have to pay for its operation. The Department of Education has been dragging our students' test scores into the toilet ever since it was created. The Federal Communications Commission is free to censor and set limits on the use of media, even going as far as to demand that a right-wing radio station host liberals and vice versa. The Transportation Security Administration comes up with idiotic politically-vetted policies that don't protect a single person and make the general public want to throttle them. There isn't a single good reason for massive wastes of time and resources like the ones above to be sucking up taxpayer dollars.
The Republican Party should stand for principled, consistent, dispassionate, professional jurists who interpret the Constitution using a very strict standard that's intolerant of any exercise of governmental power that is not found in the Constitution or in time-honored estabished tradition. Dred Scott v. Sanford (Missouri Compromise nullified), Katsumaru v. United States (US government has the right to arbitrarily imprison Japanese Americans), Roe v. Wade (Constitution protects abortion), Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (Undue burden test introduced), Stenberg v. Carhart (Partial-birth abortion ban unconstitutional without health exemption), Kelso v. New London (Eminient domain applies to increasing tax revenue), and Morrison v. Olson (affirming the special prosecutor law) are all examples of abominable and inexcusable decisions rendered by the Supreme Court. Jurists that support these decisions or would render decisions like them should never be allowed within 20 miles of an appeals court.
Finally, Republicans should be the part of freedom, of justice, of the American way, of strength, and of principle and let the Democrats do whatever makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside. We need a party to serve the people and neither party presently does anything more than pay lip service to the idea.
wow Keith, that is really good.
I bet even if I agree with you 99% we can figure out how to turn the other 1% into an argument.
We agree in concept, but not on the details of implementation (such as what exactly the government should regulate to protect people from the actions of other people.)
Scottie,
When the Republican leadership, disagrees with Rush, who are you most likely to agree with?
Maybe it is time for the Republican party to split into multiple parties.
How many Republicans really belong in the Constitution party, but stay in the Republican party for the power and numbers?
What about the Libertarian Party?
How many Democrats really belong in the Green Party?
Maybe people really need to start being more willing to join and establish minor parties.
It is this hesitance which is keeping these parties so powerless.
Well, if we can turn that 1% into an argument, we'd better get to it. Time's a-wastin', Eileen! :P I suggest investigation into what sort of things the government should regulate to protect the people and give us cookies, kisses, and a Band-Aid whenever we get a paper cut. Mmm... cookies...
wait, what was I talking about again?
I think you're right about having the courage to split into minor parties, Eileen. The moderate Republican faction that nominated McCain would be more comfortable in the Democrat Party, most likely. Conservatives would probably find themselves welcomed into a mildly softer version of the Libertarian Party (by softer, I mean one that believes that people should be allowed to enact regulatory laws with a moral basis... oh, and has a really good foreign policy).
While admitting that I'm biased towards Republicans, I have to say that I believe Democrats are more liable to split into minor parties than Republicans. There's a significant portion of their base that would fit beautifully into a Labor Party, a notable portion that'd fit into a Green Party, yet more who'd fit into a Socialist Party, and some from both sides that would fit well into the American equivalent of the German Christian Democrat Party. We could easily have a 6-7 party system but people have too strong an addiction to a brand name, even if that brand name has been utterly trashed (think the Republicans as of this year).
Oh, forgot some things in my previous description...
Republicans should be the party of energy independence. This means using government funding and close intimate working with the scientific community to pull out all the stops on the road to being able to run our economy without spending our time huddling in a corner, terrified that oil will increase in price. This means more efficient cars. This means, possibly, hybrids. This means pursuit of alternative oil sources like shale, ANWR, and catalytic conversion. This means a crash program to build nuclear power plants and pour our effors into developing the Holy Grail of Energy Generation: nuclear fusion. This means bucking the political theater and NIMBY know-nothings to implement a safe and effective way to manage nuclear waste (believe it or not, one presently exists). This means dozens of things but all of them can be traced to an essential enhancement of national security by, to borrow a miltiary concept, permenantly securing our supply lines.
A Republican Party should be the party of the normal guy who works a 40+ hour work week and wants to be safe at night and have financial security. This means an overhaul of the way that labor works in this country. Unions are an essential tool to safeguard the working man but they have become so insensitive to the situation of their industry, so rich on member dues, so comfortable with their lawful power that they're dragging the working man down. There has to be a reform that doesn't eliminate unions but also trims them down to the earnest and effective advocate of the working man (with a realistic vision of the world around them in the tradition of Sam Gompers) without leaving them to enjoy the fruits of member dues and randomly decide that the time has come to demand more money and goodies while the industry is facing the possibility of eliminating jobs entirely. This, naturally, also means sound fiscal discipline and intelligent financial policy such as the elimination of all artifical price floors and ceilings (minimum wage and rent controls are one example of each) and curtailment of subsidies. Finally, this means the encouragement of free trade where global competition is added to domestic to cause American industries to slim down, toughen up, and become reliable employers and net exporters of goods and services.
Republicans should be the party of enlightened nationalism in the foreign policy realm. We should take a page from the Defend America First Committee in the days leading up to World War 2 and assert that "no power or combination of powers can successfully attack a prepared America." This means a miliary and defense structure (including intelligence services) second to none. It means working to retain the definining characteristic of a great power that is, to say, the ability to decisively leverage its power to achieve anything while only leveraging its power when it's neccessary. It would easily be one of the most difficult philosophies to implement because it would mean giving up the addiction to being a global deus ex machina and look out only for the interests of America.
The contininent of Europe, which has had the longest life as the military masters of the world, should have their crutches gently taken away and made to be as strong as they once were before an interventionalist America took sole responsibility for their militaries (Britain being the only exception). The American soldier is meandering the world quelling brush fires in remote places that America only cares about because CNN tells us to. They're camped out on the Korean border and, worse, in Germany whose chances of being invaded by the USSR rank somewhere up there with the chances of Jamaica conquering Russia. We have treaties up the wazoo saying that if someone says unkind things to one of dozens of countries, the US will spend its blood and treasure on their behalf without any promises in the other direction. This situation must change.
And if you hoped that, for once, a conservative would forget about the UN, sorry. The UN is an absurd farce without tooth, fang, or the ability to see outside their insular beliefs about the world at large. They act to take money from us then demand that we live in whatever way suits their fancy. America gains nothing from them so Republicans should the the party that downgrades the UN to an irrelevant annoyance until it proves itself worthy.
In the past, America was the arsenal and hammer of democracy; Republicans should be the party that returns America to that place. Revoke all treaties that are one-way-only. If a fight happens, define the space, define the mission, and get those poor Devil Dogs back to their wives and kids the second the mission is accomplished. If Korean boys want to keep their country free, then Korean boys should shed the blood while America puts guns in their hands and food in their bellies. And above all... no more foreign entanglements. This is what Republicans should stand for as a party.
I'll probably remember more things to add eventually... be patient, my minions.
Keith,
If I didn't know better, I would think you wanted an argument.
You should have stopped while you were ahead,
your original post was so elegant.
But I have to agree on the ways the Democratic party should split.
I disagree that the Republican party should not split.
This labeling, a democrat, of anyone that does not fit your view of what the party should stand for, is a sign that the party is split.
When this very person gets the Republican nomination, what does that say about what you think a Republican is, versus what the majority of the party thinks.
So you want the government to use tax dollars on the energy front, to keep cheap energy flowing?
I would assume they limited their involvement to insuring we have what we need for defense.
You want to government to regulate based on your morals, but not those you don't agree with?
Interesting.
Kieth if you think I want the government to give us cookies and kisses, you have no clue as to where I stand on politics and economics.
I find arguing with you mostly futile anyway.
Why else would I go out of my way to push your buttons via honest statement of my beliefs? But no, I wasn't seeking an argument.
I didn't say that the Republican party shouldn't split. Read the post again.
And actually, they don't represent a majority of the party. They represent a faction of the party plus a preponderance of voters that weren't a part of the party due to open primaries in states. A majority of the party is more in line with a Huckabee or Romney than a McCain but with the two of them splitting the majority of Republicans and McCain getting the independents, McCain won. I represent the majority of Republicans; McCain does not.
More like a rededication of currently allotted resources. At least energy has some relation to providing for the common defense (giving it clear Constitutional justification) unlike a majority of government programs. But I really meant that the government should put its money and resources behind the problem, mainly to free up avenues for the more efficient private efforts to pursue.
I said nothing of the sort.
Eileen, don't you recognize flippancy when you read it? I was deliberately being silly as opposed to trying to represent what I think you believe. I can't believe you thought that a statement including ":P" and "Mmm... cookies..." was meant to be remotely serious.
Of course it's futile. It's like resisting the Borg!
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