What's Wrong With the GOP - A Humble Observation

I think America is beginning to realize that they bought a lemon in president Obama. I think it’s also fair to say that this infestation of the Democratic Party is more invasive and repulsive than a houseful of cockroaches. Most polls show that the American electorate is slightly right of center on the political spectrum, so it begs the question – why are we allowing these uber-liberal politicians to take over our political system and what can be done about it?

There has been plenty of Bush bashing from the left, so I won’t dwell on this too long, but I believe it started with the Bush administration. I truly think, all things considered, George W. Bush was a good president and that he had the interests of the American people at heart, especially with respect to national security. However, there are a few things regarding spending and domestic policy that Republicans need to take ownership of and correct.

1. They had majority control of both chambers of congress and the White House for two full sessions of congress. To their credit they got the Bush tax cuts passed, but why in the world did they vote them in as temporary? Without legislative action these tax cuts will expire after 2010. President Obama and his henchmen in congress will undoubtedly allow them to expire. The Republicans should have worked to make them permanent when they had the chance.

2. President Bush in a genuine attempt to reach across the aisle partnered with the late Senator Kennedy to create the “No Child Left Behind Act” expanding not only the cost to the taxpayers, but more importantly, the federal government’s role in education. He was joined in this effort by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH).

3. After a solid victory in 2004 and still holding a majority in both chambers, President Bush made a haphazard attempt to reform Social Security – a broken program on life support that will either go broke or cause significant tax increases in the future to keep alive. Although this is a very tough and complicated issue, there were many great ideas floating around out there on how to fix it through, if not complete, at least partial privatization of the program. I believe something could have been done about it, but due to the Republican’s inability to come up with a solid message for this, the initiative fizzled and was abandoned.

4. So… as a follow up to this, President Bush also signed into law the “Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act” (aka Medicare Part D) which took effect on 1/1/2006 - this to expand a broken program which based on current obligation, if continued indefinitely, would run an $85.6 TRILLION deficit! I call this throwing good money after bad.

5. In the 2008 presidential election the Republicans took a devastating loss to the Democrats due to the fact that they could not come up with a decent presidential candidate. In my opinion, John McCain’s lackluster performance was due to two things – his inability to articulate a clear and consistent message during the campaign, and his tragic error of trying to get the electorate to buy into his populist message pandering to the so-called “moderates” (aka liberal lite). In my mind, there is no other explanation as to why America would elect a neophyte with zero executive experience and a paper thin resume.

There are many other examples of these sorts of errors in political judgment by the Republicans, but my time is limited, so I will stop here.

So what of the future of the GOP? Well, it’s unclear right now, but all indications point to the fact that with the leadership of Michael Steele, they are continuing to try to move to the center to rebrand the Republican Party and pick up the “moderate” vote. I believe this is a losing strategy. The town hall meetings and the tea parties that occurred this summer are an indication of this. In an environment where the liberals are making great strides in infiltrating our political system, the GOP (or perhaps a third party) needs to step in with a clear message that this is a government by and for the people and that we won’t stand for any more entitlement programs or wasteful government spending.