The Republicans are out of ideas

Democrats Control 2008 Presidential Campaign
By Ken Taylor Posted in 2008 ?- Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Have you noticed that there is a very distinct lack of enthusiasm in GOP circles when it comes to the 2008 Presidential race. Sure political junkies are involved, watching, listening and posting. But for, " John Q, " Republican and Independent the interest is not that high. Every day Democrats, even when the GOP holds a debate manage to steal the spotlight in the overall debate for the 2008 election.

Some of this spotlight theft comes from the fact that the MSM and the Democrats are political partners and anything that they say is considered news worthy and , "awe inspiring, " by the liberal media. But Sunday's GOP debate revealed an extremely telling problem that has beset the GOP and is in a very real sense a prominent reason that Democrats are controlling the debate for next years election.

Throughout the night most of the candidates spent a considerable amount of time lashing out against Hillary Clinton, who is only the perceived nominee and not official yet. Second a great deal of time was spent on one particularly issue that is not only NOT a GOP issue but did not become a top issue until Democrat candidates began campaigning with their versions of Universal Health Care.

First, let's deal with the Hillary factor. Everyone in the GOP understands that she is dangerous and that if elected she will not only tax the country to death but will plunge the nation into an American form of Socialism. With that said it is very appropriate to attack her and what she is proposing and running on. The problem is that GOP candidates are not offering the voters much of anything in opposition to Hillary except that they are not her.

While anyone who has any drop of conservative blood in their veins understands that Hillary is proposing ideas that will ultimately damage the country, GOP candidates are only running against her and not taking the offensive on the issues to oppose what she offers. While her plans and ideas are tax heavy and expand the government to an unheard of size and scope of control that would be unprecedented, she is proposing ideas and not JUST saying that the people should elect her BECAUSE she is not George Bush or a Republican.

The GOP candidates are more or less running REACTIVE campaigns rather than PROACTIVE campaigns. Voters regardless of political affiliation as a whole vote on issues. As they make their decision as to who they will vote for the ideas that a candidate present decide in the mind of that voter who best will deal with the important issues facing this nation.

While wrong Hillary is dealing with issues by offering plan after plan through massive government give-aways or pulling out of Iraq etc. and the GOP candidates are not offering anything as an alternative, except that we don't need Hillaryism.

One telling example of how Democrats have taken control of the 08 debate is the issue of Health Care. As we entered 2007 there were several polls that asked questions about which issues the American people were most concerned about. In just about every poll the top issues were the war, terrorism and illegal immigration. Health care while important was down the list at around fifth or sixth and in some polls as low as tenth.

The issues at the top were what are considered GOP issues. Then came the Amnesty Bill debacle and with its failure due to the outcry of conservatives, illegal immigration in many respects dropped of the political radar. Democrats then started revealing their Health Care plans and low and behold an issue that was in the middle or near the end of the list of importance to voters suddenly jumped to the number one issue in the campaign and the GOP was left scratching their head.

Even in the debate last Sunday only Tom Tancredo expressed the real issue as far as Republican voters are concerned about Health Care. Most of the candidates when asked gave their version of government solving of Health Care. Though not the Socialism plans of the Democrats, they still were plans that involved the Federal Government in solving the problem.

Tancredo then interjected almost in frustration that the real debate should not be how the government is going to solve the Health Care problem but whether the government should be involved at all. This one statement is the key to how the GOP is handling the 2008 campaign. They are reacting to the Democrats rather than countering them with strong conservative ideas that are more appealing to voters than the Socialism plans of the Democrats.

Democrats have taken the debate on the war and made it into a referendum on pulling out of Iraq rather than the real issue of defeating Islamic radicalism and the terrorism that they use as a weapon. Republicans have lost control of the war debate and now only defend victory as if it were a plague instead of a necessity for our security and the reason that we must continue to fight.

If Republicans do not take back the issue initiative from Democrats, 2008 could very well be a disaster for the GOP with gains in Congress and a Democrat President who will most likely be Hillary Clinton.

The American people want a debate on the issues, but a debate that offers differing ideas and plans as to what direction the nation should go. Democrats are offering their plans and ideas and Republicans are reacting rather than presenting plans and ideas that not only offer alternatives to the liberal/socialist plan of the Democrats but give real and non-governmental alternatives which will reduce the size of government and the tax burden on individuals.

Republicans must take back the debate on the war by stressing the success and accomplishment and the alternative to defeat which as we know is the death of Americans and the destruction of our way of life. Revitalize the illegal immigration debate but this time stressing the need to control the border and reduce the flow of illegals while cracking down on illegal employment thus cutting the life line which will begin a voluntary return to Mexico by illegals as the jobs dry up.

Democrats have never been able to win elections when there has been a serious debate on the issues. They have always thrown out give-aways as ideas and plans with little substance on solving problems other than let government do it. Republicans on the other hand have always won on the issues BECAUSE their plans and ideas have offered true solutions and limited government intervention both to individuals and business.

That is how the GOP has been successful in the past and also why they lost in 2006. The loss was due to the fact that GOP candidates and the GOP majority in Congress abandoned the non-government solution oriented ideas and exploded government spending and ran in a defensive posture both on leading the government and the war in the 2006 election.

Unless the GOP begins standing firm on traditional conservative issues offering solutions and taking back the offensive in the 2008 debate rather than responding to Hillary's plans and Democrat give - aways and taking the offensive for victory in the war rather than defending why we are fighting, on November 6, 2008 we will wake to a super majority Democrat House and Senate and another Clinton in the White House.

To my way of thinking, the single, most serious problem this country is facing is the way we seem intent on handling the National Budget. This is both Parties' fault.

Except for two/three years, this country has run a deficit budget ever since '69. (President Clinton can claim the balanced years.) That is a LONG time to run up the "credit card" debt. In the mean, the interest on that debt has gone from a tolerable 2/3% to near 10% of the budget. That 10% does not "pay down" the debt, only maintains the status quo. I don't know about you, but if my family budget was paying out 10% just in "minimum payments" for credit cards, I would consider my budget in trouble.

We need to have a Congress that is financially responsible and we need to enforce a balanced budget. We need to stop "earmarks" that buy campaign money. We need to stop Congressional voter block buying with "special" programs.

Initial effort: Allocate that 10% for the interest on the National Debt, plus 5% of the budget toward the paydown on that debt. ALL ELSE on the budget gets figured from there with an eye on NO deficit spending. At the very least it will strengthen the dollar and reverse the inflationary trend.

At both the Macro AND Micro level, this is called "living within one's means." Borrowing to maintain one's "standard of living" is, in the long run, self defeating. It cannot be continued for ever.

How to arrive at such a far reaching goal.....well, that's what we hire Congress to do; Take care of the Country's business. In the final analysis, remember, Congress does not "pay the bills", we (the people) do. Like the man says "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."

Halfback

Then by your admission, just about every spending program mentioned by any candidate would have to be shelved or you would raise taxes even higher than they are now.

You do realize that, don't you?

woiyo wrote:

Then by your admission, just about every spending program mentioned by any candidate would have to be shelved or you would raise taxes even higher than they are now.

You do realize that, don't you?

Are you kidding? I support raising taxes! I've supported it for years!

Yes, I want my personal taxes to be higher, and yours too. America doesn't work without money invested into it by its' constituents, and I'm not willing to shirk that responsibility any longer, just so I can buy a new playstation or something.

Cycloptichorn


No, our taxes are not high as compared to Canada, but we are not discussion ratios.

So you want to increase spending on a variety of social issues, raise taxes, reduce only the military budget. Did I miss anything?

once again, on edit: You do realize that our taxes are historically lower then they've been in pretty much the last 100 years? During a war? You say 'even higher then they are now,' but they aren't high now at all.

[W]ith the honorable exception of long-shot candidate Mike Huckabee, the Republican field seems content with an economic program that comes down to opposing whatever Hillary Clinton proposes. [..] A tax credit for parents struggling to pay their children's college tuition? Matching funds for 401(k)s? Baby bonds? Crazy notions all, not because of their substance -- Rudy [Giuliani] can't be bothered with their substance -- but because they were proposed by [..] Hillary [..].

As a road map to governance, this is both dim and skimpy. President Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson can reliably be counted on to be against whatever Clinton is for. Beyond that, if we total up their domestic and economic policy proposals, they intend to do almost nothing at all.

Romney will punt to the states the problem of the decreasing willingness of employers to provide health insurance. Giuliani says everybody should just buy their own policies -- and if the insurance companies don't want to sell to the sick or middle-aged, that's just too bad. John McCain focuses on the rising costs of treating chronic diseases rather than the declining level of coverage. Fred Thompson wants to take a whack at Medicare. [..]

The serious postmortems for President Bush's ultra-Reaganite and uber-Goldwateristic plan to privatize Social Security -- the questioning of the sanity of such a proposal at a time when employer-provided pension plans were dropping like flies -- have yet to be conducted in conservative circles. Indeed, Fred Thompson is still mumbling about cutting Social Security. Ol' Fred may have slept through 2005 -- the year of privatization's protracted stillbirth -- but did the entire party?

I thought maybe Meyerson was being unfair. So I went to Mitt Romney's website to look at his healthcare plan. Here it is: "The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms." That's the whole thing. The rest of the page has a pair of quotes from two years ago, a single short video taken at a campaign event, and a couple of outside links.

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

Halfback wrote:

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

I agree that earmarks have to be brought under control; just not that it's the solution to our money woes.

I think that you fellows seriously underestimate the amount of revenue that a modest increase in taxation would bring in. A 5% rise on the top bracket alone would net hundreds of billions in revenue per year. Combine that with a 1% rise for everyone else, while ending the war and poof - no more deficit.

Combine that with raising the cap from SS payments, along with the retirement age and a modest reduction of benefits over time, and SS lasts for the forseeable future.

Combine that with some sort of single-payer health care plan and our financial situation looks rosier all the time.

Combine this with some actual leadership on renewable energy technology and space utilization and we could be back on top quick enough.

More then anything else, Leadership is what we lack right now.

Cycloptichorn

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Halfback wrote:

It does seem inevitable that taxes WILL have to rise, but NOT to the point that they will make up the difference to maintain status quo spending levels! Neither you nor I would tolerate that.

Yeah, the war would have to come to a screeching halt. (I was against this mess from the beginning) There were other ways we could have exacted "pay back" for 9/11, much more "cost effective" to boot.

Yeah, all the feel good programs that are being "promised" by ALL candidates will have to go into a holding pattern until the Congress can get it's house in order.

Did I say this was going to be easy? Hell NO! It's going to take a complete remake of how Congress does business AND a complete remake of how the population requires Congress to act on it's behalf.

I offer this as food for thought. My personal belief is that getting any control on Government Spending is damn near impossible. We are two generations into doing it the way we are. To stand in the way of a population near 300 million all heading in the same general direction.....

Well, sounds like a good way to get trampled to death.

Halfback

I agree that earmarks have to be brought under control; just not that it's the solution to our money woes.

I think that you fellows seriously underestimate the amount of revenue that a modest increase in taxation would bring in. A 5% rise on the top bracket alone would net hundreds of billions in revenue per year. Combine that with a 1% rise for everyone else, while ending the war and poof - no more deficit.

Combine that with raising the cap from SS payments, along with the retirement age and a modest reduction of benefits over time, and SS lasts for the forseeable future.

Combine that with some sort of single-payer health care plan and our financial situation looks rosier all the time.

Combine this with some actual leadership on renewable energy technology and space utilization and we could be back on top quick enough.

More then anything else, Leadership is what we lack right now.

Cycloptichorn

To be honest, you seem to have "class envy".
You are favoring a 5% increase on the top[ bracket, that means on the rich.

You are aware that the "rich" already pay the lions share of ALL TAXES, including income tax.
Why do you think its ok to raise the taxes on the "rich"?

If you want true fairness, shouldnt the taxes on the rich be lowered to the same rates as everyone else?
Instead of them paying over 50% of all taxes, shouldnt they pay in proportion to how many rich people there are?

By that I mean that if only 15% of the population qualifies as rich, then shouldnt they only pay 15% of the total tax bill?
Or,are you in favor of discriminating against the "rich"?

username wrote:

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

The left keeps saying that tax cuts favored the rich, but I fail to see how.
If everyone got the same rate cut, say a 12% cut, then how does that favor the "rich"?
True, since they pay more,they will get a bigger saving, but they will still be paying more then anyone else.
Also,since several thousand people were removed from the tax rolls totally by the Bush tax cuts, how did the rich benefit more then those people did?

I am not against a progressive tax rate, but lets keep it fair.
If you raise taxes on the "rich", then taxes on EVERYONE should go up by the same percentage.
By constantly taxing the "rich", you are removing the incentive for anyone else to get rich, because they know they wont be able to keep what they earn.

Or, are you one of those people that think the "rich" all got that way by stealing their money or otherwise being dishonest.

username wrote:

Mysteryman, just to take one point, are you aware of the fact that the EFFECTIVE tax rate--the rate that the rich actually pay taxes, after the many deductions that they can claim, is in fact just about the same as the effective tax rate everybody else pays? They6're not getting soaked extra. They can afford it, though, so yes they should pay more. It's called progressive taxation. It was what we had through the country's explosive Post-WWII growqth, through the Clinton administration. It didn't damp our growth, despite years of Republican whining. And tax cuts that disporoportionately favred the rich, i.i. the whole Bush administration economy, has reduced an eight-cylinder economy to firing on about five cylinders--maybe six in a good season.

The left keeps saying that tax cuts favored the rich, but I fail to see how.
If everyone got the same rate cut, say a 12% cut, then how does that favor the "rich"?
True, since they pay more,they will get a bigger saving, but they will still be paying more then anyone else.
Also,since several thousand people were removed from the tax rolls totally by the Bush tax cuts, how did the rich benefit more then those people did?

I am not against a progressive tax rate, but lets keep it fair.
If you raise taxes on the "rich", then taxes on EVERYONE should go up by the same percentage.
By constantly taxing the "rich", you are removing the incentive for anyone else to get rich, because they know they wont be able to keep what they earn.

Or, are you one of those people that think the "rich" all got that way by stealing their money or otherwise being dishonest.