I'm wondering where the conservative party went that was called the Republican Party?
I’ve been a lifelong Republican voter. The behavior of the Bush Administration in this latest economic crisis has made me question my allegiance. This calls into question the Country Club wing of the party. I don’t think they can be trusted to govern.
The Republican Party has always been the party of the business interest. And unlike Democrats we understand we do need rich people to create jobs. Amazingly poor people don’t create very many. So the policy is to promote risk and reward, where some people get rich and others not so. And limit the scope of government as the Founding Fathers intended since unlimited government can do unlimited amount of wrong including take our liberties away. That’s the idea anyway. Note all these political ideas come within the context of a Christian ethos, not Confusion or Hindu or Islamic, etc.
The Country Club set has been the moneyed presence behind the party. They have little interest in cultural issues; and give lip service to its crazy religious fanatics like me (kinda like the crazy uncle best avoided). But they need a popular movement like a pro-life message to support their unpopular policies benefitting large multi-national corporations and such. That’s ok, I’ll get mine in the afterlife and more importantly must answer to my behavior here to Almighty God. Of course foolish talk to sophisticated secularists. And the majority of non-church goers don’t vote Republican. They don’t want to be cheated here, since there’s nothing in the after life; better get yours while you can. There’s always talk from the Country Club set that it’s time to ditch the Pro-Life wackos: the most recent example was the candidacy of esteemed Rudolf Guliani, former Mayor of New York, whose get tough stance was wedded with stands on Pro-Abortion and legalizing non-traditional marital relationships. Much touted by the media as the anointed front runner of the Republican Party early in the 2008 campaign, he polled something in the low single digits in the primaries. I guess his Country Club friends didn’t show up to vote for him. And maybe they did but there weren’t that many of them.
Country Clubbers think they can pander to the “Seculars” with a social program here and a concession to “progressive” social policy there. Of course little do they know that a full loaf is better than half and so folks that place Faith in government to mitigate the inequities, i.e. seeing those rich bastards living off the fat getting their justs, will vote for a government that wants to take from the rich and give to the poor like our friends the Democrats. Country Club set simply wants to appear friendly and not so judgmental like those religious fanatics and that won’t be enough. Conservatives want to see life defended and individuals taking responsibility for their decisions.
The Bush administration Supreme Court justice appointments have been commendable. Unfortunately, this leaves the Pro-Life movement only something at a level a kin to a situation prior to a Brown V. Board of Education like ruling, in other words the first baby step towards the Civil Rights movement for the unborn has yet to be taken. So we haven’t even gotten to a Court Ruling yet and Republican Justices have been appointed again and again to virtually no result. There’s some million or two unborn being murdered nonetheless each year. Nothing has been done for the Pro-Life movement despite the generous Judicial appointments. So the prospect of a favorable judicial ruling is the highlight of the administration; that is some day in the future the Supreme Court might recognize that abortion is not an unlimited privilege.
Republicans become a Party without Fiscal Responsibility: once in power they failed to restrain government spending. All the decades of calling the Democrats tax and spend Liberals rings hallow. Republicans became spend like a Liberal party. They have soiled their reputations as the party of fiscal responsibility; this can’t be reclaimed for at least a generation. How can ideals of Conservatism be claimed here?
Tax policy was skewed to the wealthy unlike Reagan who tried to equalize taxes on all income types. Tax policy has virtually removed taxes from un-earned income with rates at zero to 15%. In contrast earned income for the vast majority of the self-employed populace is taxed at 35% to 45%. I bet you’re wondering how that could be. Most folks are in the 15% or 25% Federal income tax bracket then add the 15.3% Self Employment tax and say 5% for state income tax and guess what? You’re paying a giving a very large portion of your income to the government to earn a living.
On the other hand if you’re sitting around with large capital investments say into rental housing spinning off paper losses then you don’t have any deemed income and pay no tax until you sell the investment and once again you’re at tops 15% capital gain rates and maybe zero, same as dividends (taxed at capital gain rates). Ironically, the Self Employment tax helps to support Social Security payments, which are in fact one big income transfer program from one generation to another: the putative Social Security fund to have been built up over generations, depleted long ago by overgenerous entitlements. How can we expect a majority of people to see this as fair?
As been the policy over many Presidents, Republican and Democrat, a policy of a strong dollar was maintained. A strong dollar to finance deficits and provide cheap consumer goods comes at a great cost: the insistence on strong dollar and the vaunted global economy have destroyed our manufacturing base. Eventually, this Great Republic will be behest of the international financial market and currency traders, whose perception of value of the dollar it is. A dramatic decline in the dollar will cause financial disaster; prices would soar, since nothing or little is made here any longer. Ok, I exaggerate. 25% of our economy is from foreign trade. Upon collapse of the dollar, inflation would run rampant as oil and consumer goods would suddenly be priced much higher. I still hear voices that the strong dollar much be maintained with an eye to the oil sheiks, China and Japan, etc. who finance our trade and budget deficits. America is so indebted its already beholden to its lenders. One can’t fault Republicans solely for this one but this policy still values cheap consumer goods over a manufacturing base: needed to give good jobs to citizens of the Republic and not put the Republic at risk to foreign financial powers.
The ultimate outrage was the massive effusion of funds to corporations, best termed as Corporate Welfare, to the tune of over a $trillion dollars in response to faltering financial markets. Suddenly it was deemed necessary to prop up financial corporate America, save them from their own wrong headed moves in contradiction to a risk and reward system. Now it’s a no risk policy and bail you out if you fail system. First Bear Stearns, a stock brokerage firm, gets $30 billion to prop it up. These are engineered by Secretary of Treasury, Henry Paulson, formerly head of Goldman Sachs. Then AIG (insurance) gets rewarded twice once for $ 80 billion then another $50 billion or so for their stupidities with Credit Default Swaps (they would continue to receive billions in 2009); the sale of insurance against bond failure: as it turns out insurance on bad mortgage backed securities that AIG in their genius figured would never default. Ooops! Mortgage backed securities begin to fail and they don’t have the funds to cover the losses.
It seems they’re for capitalism except when it comes to a financial industry which makes bad decisions. These bailouts mentioned above were done independently by the Treasury without oversight. (Note that the $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns had absolutely no oversight or strings attached; kind of like here’s your $30 billion check, Johnnie, don’t spend it all in one place.) I fail to mention a $100 to 200 billion bail out of the mortgage giants Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. Wait we’re not done yet.
Thence came the mother of bailouts that is the proposal to buy up the $700 billion worth of bad mortgage loans that caused the financial meltdown in the first place. This was presented to the public and the Congress with all the hysteria of an impending financial holocaust a la Great Depression 1929. It was implied without this “remedy” the economy would go into irretrievable collapse and the stock market would sustain massive reverses. Well, the package was rushed through Congress with the approval of both Senatorial presidential candidates as well as President George W. Bush. Then the Stock Market proceeded to lose over 20% of its value despite the Bailout.
Amazingly, after the election the Bush Administration announced it made a mistake it really wasn't going to use the bail out of $700 in the means protrayed; an astounding admission of incompetence. The initial alarm with all the panic that Civilization as we know it will cease to exist if we don't get the bail out money then a month later saying we've changed our mind about this we're not going to use like we said we would.
Now, the underlying subtext is no political party wants to be presiding over another crash of ’29; the Republican Party didn’t get fully back into power for another 60 years. Nonetheless this was a massive shift in policy; a massive intervention into the financial markets far beyond what could have thought to have been envisioned by a conservative party. A Republican opposition would have railed against these measures as socialistic or even worse. But it continues, Paulson decides to give some $25 billions in cash to bolster banks some of whom really didn’t want it, at least as it was reported. (In 2009 these cash payments are done repeatedly to Citi Bank and Bank of America to prop them up… We lose track how much of the taxpayers money gets handed over.)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are governmental sponsored entities (corporations), funded by the Federal government and administered by private management. Their mission was to promote homeownership with below market mortgage loans. Congress with its Community Re-investment Act would force Banks to lend to clients with subpar credit to plow money back into communities. These Government Sponsored Entities (GSE) would buy securities backed by this mortgages, allowing banks to off load these suspect mortgages. When their massive accounting irregularities came to light in 2005 Congress could find no defalcations or even see a need for more scrutiny. Most culpable were House Democrats, many of whom were recipients of extensive campaign contributions, namely Barney Frank and Barbara Waxman, who wondered why this organization’s procedures were called to question at all. Note long time Congressman Barney Frank’s lover was a high level executive with Fanny Mae. Barney was also a campaign finance recipient. Three years later this financial mess came to roost. These are the securities AIG insured and brokerage firms purchased to leverage other investments.
Just as offensive were the truly spectacular salaries that some of the corporate executives that headed these bail out recipients. The newspaper USA Today, Oct 1, 2008, reported bonuses for these departing executives.
• AIG CEO Martin Sullivan received $25.4 million, including $322,000 for private use of corporate aircraft, $153,000 for car and parking, $160,000 for home security and $41,000 for financial planning.
• Former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld got $187 million. (Actually allowed to fail!)
• O'Neal of Merrill Lynch received $66 million, including $357,000 for car services and personal use of aircraft in 2007. (Bought by Bank of America which is now showing signs of failure as well, taxpayers next bailout?)
• Prince of Citigroup made $42 million, including $180,000 for corporate aircraft, ground transportation and security services.
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made $76.2 million, including $233,000 for car and driver services and $61,000 for financial and benefits counseling services. (Not bailed out….yet.)
All deserving chaps, everyone of them, I suppose. The problem being, corporate America gives itself great liberty to “manage” its work force with layoffs in any economic clime (see the forced layoffs in the 1980’s to simply make additional profits and insistence on using foreign employment) and reward management very handsomely indeed as seem above. Corporate Welfare violates this pact with its modern latifundia.
This brings me to foreign policy. Anyone for spending $500 billion to remove a foreign regime, destroy a country then re-build it, namely IRAQ? This is a praiseworthy project. Saddam Hussein was presumed to be a threat to America, with violations of UN resolutions and an all around vicious guy with lots of weapons of mass destruction to pass around to others. Once again in Biblical proportions America destroyed a country on the other side of the global losing a hundred or so soldiers. An incredible historic military feat. Now that the Iraqi house was destroyed, how to build it back up again? Well, being a Democracy the house of Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization some five millennium old, some four millennium before Western Europe could even read, had to be rebuilt to our specs. It’s still being built after some five years. 2008 Presidential Candidate John McCain didn’t mind if it took an hundred. All commendable and I had young men from our block and from our church who dodged bullets and bombs over there and I stand four square behind them. Unlike the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates both of whom who voted to cutoff funding, much like what was done in Vietnam era, in which the government collapsed under invasion of the North Vietnamese much for lack of funding. This precipitated a reign of communist terror in the region with the loss of several hundred thousands of innocent lives slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and a Communist Regime in South Vietnam so reprehensible with thousands sent to “re-education camps”, many died there, that thousands preferred to flee anyway they could to the endangerment of the lives as the “boat people” testify.
Anyway back to the re-building of Iraq, American Democracy couldn’t just put someone in place aligned with the most powerful segment sympathetic to America in the country, whether Shiite or Sunni and let them knock heads to any resistance: problem solved - no more crazy Saddam with WMD. They had to “Nation build” and create a mini-America there. Years later and hundred of billions of dollars America is still building.
Nonetheless carrying on foreign policy like this is one extremely expensive. It’s difficult for the majority of the public to comprehend and then they vote you out, ala 2006 when both Houses of Congress went Democratic. This was the first vote of no-confidence. The extended campaign in Iraq lost Republicans congress.
America must know its limits and not forget the lessons of the World Wars in the 20th Century upon which large amount of blame can be placed on Great Britain’s policy of hegemony punctuated by continued land grabbing in the Middle East with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War One which was itself precipitated by insistence on Britain’s pre-war hegemony. Germany, a newly formed nation in 1871 with a Constitutional Monarchy, a nation of laws, was exercising its newly attained hegemony in continental Europe and was painted as pernicious warmonger not simply threat to British colonial interests.
A new conservative party may be the only way to go. Question is still open as to who’s going to lead the Republican Party. The conservative wing has no confidence in the current leadership in the former White House or many ci-disant of the Senate. It would be better to lose a few elections until the Pork Barrel Party of Democrats has completely discredited itself. And based on its record in the first month and half with the massive Stimulate Big Government bill of $800 billion jam packed with pork, it may only to the next election that the public will have forgotten the incompetent policies of the party in opposition. Then again the Republican House must be cleaned and if not a new party has to be created.
