Liberty's Blog

The Politics Of Self Destruction.

Tuesday the Republicans were exposed as vulnerable at the polls, and the Republican Congress responds by doing the liberal thing and voting to can ANWR drilling, Refuses to budget cut the greasiest of pork, and supporting censorious bills to limit the 1st amendment. We can no longer blame the Democrats, They control nothing. The Republicans have turned into Democrats, and they are going to find themselves in big trouble in 2006 unless they wake up real soon, Can a conservative honestly support this party of hypocrites any more? At least the Democrats don't claim to be about economic growth, and small government. Conservatives are concerned, and they should be.

Republicans in both the Senate and the House were in disarray today. In the House, the party's leaders had to yank their ballyhooed $54 billion budget-cutting bill when it became apparent that their attempted compromise had failed to garner majority support. In a slap at the party's conservative base, the leadership agreed to cave in to the environmentalist lobby on ANWR oil drilling, an absolutely inexcusable move in a time of high oil prices. At the same time, "moderate" Republicans still failed to support the measure because they apparently can't stomach even the slightest budget cuts, notwithstanding the nation's current deficits and unprecedented spending increases.

That was bad enough, but what the Senate did may have been even worse. The Senate Finance Committee was unable to get behind an extension of the President's tax cuts, even for a single year, let alone permanently. Olympia Snowe was the villain here, but, to be fair, all Republicans (and Democrats) who have supported tax cuts while also voting for mushrooming increases in spending are equally to blame.

So the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot once again. The national media are having a field day, recording the party's panic and disarray. What I want to know is, what is the source of the apparent malaise on the Republican side of the aisle?

Almost exactly one year ago, President Bush was re-elected with more votes than had ever been cast for a Presidential candidate, breaking Ronald Reagan's 1984 record. Not only did Bush sweep to victory by a three million vote margin, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate, the first time this trifecta had been accomplished since 1964.

Republicans are taking it all for granted, in the mean time support for them is waning away. Conservatives who look for conservative spending budgets, smaller and more responsive goverment might be hard pressed to ever vote democrat, but they are also going to have a hard time donating money to a party that is looking more and more like 1994 Democratic party.

posted by Liberty @ 8:20 AM