Mailvox: Republican Candide

T writes: No sir. Bush and the Repubs must be given a bit of time to kill the Dems first.. then rise against them…

We’ve been hearing this sad excuse since 1980. In the past 23 years, only Ronald Reagan accomplished anything in terms of moving the country towards freedom, and even his presidency was ultimately a failure, not eliminating a single Federal department, massively increasing debt and leaving a legacy of Bush-league conservativism behind.

If the saying goes: “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”, what does that say for the foolishness of a Republican who gets fooled three, four and five times? What does George Delano Bush have to do to convince you of his lack of conviction in republican ideals, order the confiscation of all private firearms while having sex with Hillary Clinton on Nickelodeon? Personally conducting a polygamous multi-species gay marriage in the Oval Office? Even that wouldn’t be enough for some Republicans, who would argue that now, having locked in both the anti-gun and trans-species votes, the Republican party is really, really, really, really in a position to reduce all of the central government expansion to which the party itself has contributed for the last two decades. Stop judging them by their words, people, judge them by their actions!

LW writes: I agree, Bush and congress are spendocrats. But I do believe any democrat that gets in office will increase spending a great deal more. That is not a defense of what is going on, only a practical assessment.

History strongly suggests that this belief, however strongly held, is nothing more than a naive rationalization. “The greatest increases in average annual domestic discretionary spending over the last 40 years were, except for Reagan, during Republican administrations: Bush II (8.2%), Ford (8.0%), Nixon (6.8%), LBJ (4.3%), Bush I (4.0%), Clinton (2.5%), Carter (2.0%), Reagan (-1.3%).”

Many conservatives commentators who believe in republican ideals call the Republicans the Stupid Party. It’s not hard to see why. For who could argue that it is, without a doubt, the best of all possible political parties.