TheAgitator.com
The GOP Decade
Friday, April 16th, 2004I have a piece up at Tech Central that takes a cynical look at the 10-year anniversary of the Contract With America.
31 Responses to “The GOP Decade”
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Bravo. Well said. I am very much in the “vote them all out” mood.
Excellent Article.
Too bad it could not have run on Foxnews.
I think the contract expired like 8 years ago.
A decade or so of Republican minority would be wonderful, if it didn’t mean that the Democrats would then be the majority.
“More smallpox, sir?”
“No, I’m tired of that. I’ll have the anthrax instead.”
Why in the hell can’t “we” fire the government. I’m sick of voting for people or parties because they suck less. To me though, your article isn’t cynical. It’s just truthful reporting. This is one pissed off lifetime Republican.
And people wonder why there isn’t trust in the government and such low voter turnout…
I wonder if Newt Gingrich could have kept his mouth shut and remained as Speaker of the House if the results might have been different.
The Loonies of the Right
Do you remember Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America? Radley Balko does, and he turns in a very depressing bit of…
What a world.
Gridlock is our only hope.
We can’t even dream of winning. We always have to root for a tie.
Great job Radley. It all fell apart when we lost the term limits battle. As long as we insist on “professional” politicians” this behavior is inevitable. The American voter is for sale, and unfortunately they’re not cheap!
However,I fail to see how putting the Republicans back in the minority will, by itself, effect the change needed. After all it didn’t work the first time.
The only solution(and yes I know this has already been said a million times)is a grass-roots realization of the need for term limits. The people need to provide leadership on this issue, not the “pros”.
Term limits might actually increase spending, especially in the last term because they would figure since they are on their way out anyway that they can spend like a scorned woman on her way back to freedom and there would be no accountability. (Dont ask me where that came from).
Wouldn’t it be better if ‘we the people’ actually held our elected officials accountable? Maybe make them come home once a year, travel to the different cities in their districts and hold town meetings making them lay out exactly what they have saved and spent and letting the people question them? I mean, really, how in the world does my rep know what I want or need? He has never come to my house and asked.
MsDani:
Permit me a sexist jibe. They don’t spend money like women do–”because it’s there”. They spend it to make it easier to raise campaign funds and get re-elected. Once that is taken off the table, there is no motive for the spending.
Pemit me some cynicism. The average representative isn’t all that concerned about what Ms Dani wants. Unless Ms Dani is a major campaign contributor. The reps. who don’t think like this can’t survive in the super-competitive environment we have created.
But the biggest over-all benefit of term-limits is that it tells those people hoping for a lifetime career–to look elsewhere. I believe we all benefit from the kind of representation and leadership we would get from those who are focused on why the went to Congress in the first place, knowing that they have only so much time to accomplish their goals, as opposed to the kind of person whose every waking moment if focused on how to get re-elected.
I’d like to take this time to thank you for all the humor and moral support I have enjoyed by reading your various posts over the last few months. Keep on postin’ Ms. Dani!!
“Pemit me some cynicism. The average representative isn’t all that concerned about what Ms Dani wants. Unless Ms Dani is a major campaign contributor. The reps. who don’t think like this can’t survive in the super-competitive environment we have created.”
I agree with this. This is the problem, as I presume from your comments. The govt is not representing the people anymore. The people’s vote does not really matter anymore. The country is being legislated by and for govt and special interests, not the people and those are not talking points. It’s reality. When’s the revolt and where do I sign up?
as I presume from your comments THAT YOU AGREE… sorry, I left that part out.
I’ve brought this up before, and I realise there’s no obvious path to it, but it seems to me that this glut of spending stems from an inappropriate balance of state and federal spending powers.
There are areas of spending which clearly need to be organised at a federal level, including foreign policy in general and defence in particular.
Then there are areas in which the decision to tax and spend is clearly of interest to people in a state, rather than the Union as a whole. When these projects are funded federally everyone gets a ‘I’m going to get me a share of that pie before everyone else grabs it’ attitude because the link between expenditure and the taxes which affect them loosens.
To use a prime example, does anyone imagine that Alaska would be building these bridges if the funds were drawn from state taxation?
The life of a libertarian is a life of constant disappointment. No matter who is in government, it’s always going to be easier to spend and tax than to cut and cut. You know the old saying about problems looking like nails if your only tool is a hammer? Well in government, the only tool is tax revenue. Every idea that has a name, that sounds like something people want bad enough to vote for, costs money. The sirens of spending will drive anybody mad, given enough time.
The notion that by forcing a divided government, the president being from a different party than the congress, is an amazingly cynical view. The argument inevitably boils down to the idea that government can never do any good. If we can trick it into gridlock, then it can’t do any more harm because it can’t do anything. Essentially, this is a surrender where all tax dollars paid are considered to have died in vain.
It’s true that only through the weakness of Democrats, were they deprived of their treasured prescription drug benefit plank. I think it truly marks one of the biggest turning points of American politics. But the Democrats aren’t making any more than a pretense at reducing government. It’s not in their nature; it’s not part of the plan. Sure, they will gripe about the deficit, but only in the same breath as the class warfare argument for taxing the wealthy. They never see the deficit as a reason to restrict spending, only as a reason to increase taxes.
The Democrats got beat at their own game by Bush. To vote for them would be rewarding failure on one hand, and asking for even higher spending on the other. If the Republicans truly want to own the big spending policies formerly held by the Democrats, then it’s time for a new party to champion fiscal conservatism. That’s never going to be the Democrats. They owe too much to the various components of political correctness to ever propose real cuts.
If the country can really only support two major parties at once, which I tend to doubt, it’s likely going to be the Republicans and some other party not yet formed. Once the baby boomers start to die off in significant quantities, there will be room for a serious 3rd party to emerge. Unless the Democrats are going to completely scrap social engineering as their primary goal, they’re never going to get my vote. As long as the Republicans are willing to spend big, itâ??s unlikely that the Democrats are going to get back into power in a serious way.
either the fair tax idea, or we all pay our income taxes in one chunk the day before elections. one way deals with the tax and spend issue to some degree, the other way would just get them all out of office.
There are areas of spending which clearly need to be organised at a federal level, including foreign policy in general and defence in particular.
Then there are areas in which the decision to tax and spend is clearly of interest to people in a state, rather than the Union as a whole.
I couldn’t agree more. We should put that in the Constitution.
Oh. Shit.
I think Pinbot nailed it. While there’s a huge divide on this list recently over who is worse: Dems or Reps, we all agree that having only 2 choices sucks.
Why not ‘mobilize’ to make everyone in office more accountable? Everyone wants too much (IMO) accountability for ‘hot topics’ like 9/11 that may not have been preventable in the system at the time, but not the same scrutiny over ever bit of legislation that congress passes. Radley had an article about this a month ago (I think) talking about how many laws they go through without reading hardly any of them. Why can’t everyone get as upset about this kind of stuff as they do about a preemptive war that may or may not (depending on your opinion) protect America in the future? If your talking purely money, the prescription drug fiasco (which both parties gave us) will end up costing at least 5x as much as Iraq.
Both corquando and Pinbot nailed it.
WE hold the Truths to be self-evident…
…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…
-Declaration of Independence
It’s our government, not the politicians. Repeal the income tax and the result is a repeal in the power of the government over the people from whom the consent to be governed is granted.
Like it or not, we are all “special interests”, be it our through our employers, our churches or our affiliations (NRA, NTPU, ACU, ACLU, etc.) du jour.
Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment.
Great piece, Radley. I’d be curious to hear Rep. Young’s defense of his actions, if he has one, and I’d also be curious to hear what Newt Gingrich thinks of Young’s spending habits. Of course, Gingrich is too wrapped up spending out money in Iraq right now to worry about his failed revolution.
Don’t lose hope, Pinbot. I truly believe libertarianism will come into its own in the next 10-20 years, simply because the weight of government debt will because unsustainable.
Off-topic, every couple of months I write the Washington Post editors asking they put a libertarian writer on their regular column list. I’ve suggested RB and Doug Bandow. How about an organized letter-writing campaign to do this among Agitator fans? The Post way overrepresents liberals, neocons (they just gave an open spot to Lawrence Kaplan, which is redundant since they already have Krauthammer and Kagan in the stable), realists, and even a couple of actual conservatives, but they’ve got no libertarians, and we’re the side that’s tossing in all the good ideas these days.
This interest anyone?
Radley’s argument that the GOP abandoned those principles that swept them into the majority once they obtained power presupposes that they actually believed in those principles in the first place.
As poll-tested a document as there ever was, the Contract was simply a fraud that only partly contributed to the GOP sweep, the other being a paranoid plea to ill-informed gun owners that Clinton was going to personally take their guns away.
The Contract was, like most of the legislative initiatives offered by the GOP, a gift to thier corporate underwriters. Among the noteworthy ‘platforms’ found in the Contract were (1) Patriotic legislation that enabled corporate tax-evaders to re-patriate in more receptive countries, i.e. the Bahamas, in order to circumvent US tax laws, (2) a nifty tax shelter entitled “neutral cost recovery” that enabled Corporations to deduct mutli-million dollar business expenses at twice the original amount paid originally, a nice windfall for the special interests, and (3) my personal favorite, floating a multi-million dollar non-interest bearing loan to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in order to entice him to set up shop in the US. Two years later, Fox News was born. How perfect.
How strange that a GOP-initiated legislative package intended to appeal to middle american values ended up in the deep pockets of its corporate contributors. After all, it’s not like today’s GOP to be intentionally deceptive about its true goals in selling America on an ambitious venture.
I guess in fairness, the Democrats aren’t too much better. I mean, they just want to get you high, right?
I don’t want to refute you.
Keep talkin’.
Post often.
Especially the stuff about the
Democrats.
..and I almost forgot. More class warfare stuff, please keep it comin’
They proved that CWA was a cynical scam with the vote on the first item – they voted several times so that all the republicans got to vote for term limits at least once, without passing them. Newt promised to bring it up as the first bill in the next Congess but term limits have never seriously been on the table again.
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