George Bush and John McCain Have Destroyed The Republican Party
by Dave Gibson (10/29/08)
While Barack Obama along with his very liberal agenda, is enough to motivate many people to vote for John McCain, many of us have grown weary of the politics of appeasement practiced by both Bush and McCain. As a result, we stopped caring about this election long ago, when it became that there would actually be two liberals running for President in 2008.
Under Bush’s leadership, the National Debt went from $5 trillion in 2001, to $10.5 trillion today. The doubling of our debt has had a devastating effect on our economy, and our currency is quickly becoming worthless. Always happy to spend more money, rather than raising taxes, Bush simply goes to China or Japan and borrows more. That kind of irresponsible behavior has brought this nation to the brink of a depression and destroys any notion of fiscal conservatism, once a trademark of the Republican Party.
Under President Bush, the budget for the Department of Education has increased by more than 38 percent. Prior to the 2000 election, the Republicans vowed to abolish that bloated and largely ineffectual agency...What happened?
A 2005 Cato Institute study, found that President Bush had directed the largest increase in government spending since the Lyndon Johnson administration. Between 2002-2005, the Republican controlled Congress added no less than $91 billion to Bush’s already bloated budgets. In the days of trillion dollar bailouts, those figures now seem rather paltry.
The following is a list of some of the major spending packages supported and signed by President Bush:
$300 billion…Highway Bill
$600 billion (and counting)…Iraq War
$300 billion…bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
$85+31 billion…bailout of AIG
$850 billion…bailout of Wall Street
In 2003, Bush and the Republican Congress gave us the $400 billion Medicare drug plan, which shortly after passing, became the $534 billion Medicare bill. However, in 2005, Medicare chief Mark McClellan admitted publicly that by the year 2015, the actual cost of the plan will reach $1.2 trillion.
For the entirety of his Presidency, Bush has called for amnesty for illegal aliens. Not only has our current President failed to protect our border with Mexico, but he has actually prosecuted many of our Border Patrol agents, who take their job seriously, and do that which Bush refuses to do.
Of course, McCain tried for two years to deliver a bill to the White House which would have legalized millions of illegal aliens living inside this country, with the McCain/Kennedy Amnesty bill. An outraged public let Congress hear them loudly and clearly and put a stop to that piece of legislation. However, the episode left the Republican Party’s conservative base unable to trust their leadership again.
For years, the only group which McCain has felt the need to attack has been the conservatives within his own party. He insulted the numerous and influential Christian Conservatives by calling Pat Robertson and Rev. Jerry Farwell “agents of intolerance.” In 2006, he attacked working-class Republicans when he questioned the work ethics of Americans by saying that “Americans won’t pick lettuce for $50 an hour,” he went on “You can’t do it my friend!”
On many occasions, McCain has joined with his good friend Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to call those of us who want our borders defended “bigots.”
Under Bush and six years of the Republican Congress, we saw the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs, and our trade deficit with China alone grew to 256 billion in 2007. During this time, we have also seen a flood of Mexican trucks entering this country, loaded down with cheaply-made Chinese products, by-passing U.S. ports as well as American truck drivers. Proponents of the very harmful NAFTA and CAFTA trade policies, Bush and McCain have never seen a so-called trade agreement they did not like.
In 1992, John McCain was serving on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Vietnamese officials began to complain that American POW/MIA activists (mostly family members of the missing men) were causing too many problems and posed a threat to lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam. Incredibly, Senator and former POW McCain then went on a campaign against the POW/MIA activists and accused them of fraud. McCain once said of the families: “The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical, and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.”
Sen. McCain demanded and received a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the two major POW/MIA activist groups. Of course, no fraud as McCain alleged was ever found. The families were left angry and mystified as to why McCain had betrayed them. McCain succeeded and the trade embargo against Vietnam was lifted, and there has never been a full accounting of North Vietnamese atrocities against American POW’s.
Under Bush’s direction and with McCain’s absolute approval, we have now been at war in Afghanistan for seven years, and in Iraq for more than five. Furthermore, we do not seem to be able to put away either enemy.
Iraq of course, was bungled from the start by sending a force of only about one-third the size which was actually needed. In addition of asking an invasion force of about 150,000 troops to take and secure a country about the size of California, he has tied those troops’ hands with never before-seen restrictive rules of engagement and even prosecuted many of them for doing the job he sent them to do.
Last year, an amendment introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA.) which would have required that our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive leave equal to the length of their last deployment, failed to pass. The measure failed because 41 Republicans voted against it. These are the same Republicans who constantly claim to support our troops, even though they have allowed them to become mired in a seemingly pointless and endless conflict.
The Webb amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill would have granted 15 month home leaves to our active duty troops in Iraq, as the Defense Dept. had just extended their tours of duty to 15 months. Additionally, National Guard and Reserve troops would have received a three-year break in between active duty deployments.
After his measure failed, Sen. Webb made the following statement:
“A clear majority of the Senate, 56 members, sent a strong message today in favor of ensuring responsible deployment cycles for our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. I regret that we did not reach the 60-vote margin that would have allowed this amendment to prevail. It was offered with the intention of protecting the well-being of our troops.”
“A Republican filibuster kept this amendment from passing by an up-or-down vote. Americans are tired of this kind of posturing. The troops and their families don’t want to hear about political, procedural maneuvers. What they really care about are results. They are looking for concrete actions that will protect the well-being of our men and women in uniform.”
In 2007, Bush opposed a Democratic measure introduced in the House which would have given our military personnel a 3.5 percent pay raise. Bush called the raise “unnecessary.” Ultimately, Congress passed a lower increase to our soldiers’ pay. Though the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the Iraq War have required an enormous contribution from our military Reservists, Bush opposed extending TRICARE medical benefits to those Reservists for three years. Former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also opposed the benefits, and advised Bush to veto any defense bill which extended TRICARE to Reservists. In 2006, our Reservists were finally included in the TRICARE plan.
Bush and McCain have paid our men and women in uniform an enormous amount of lip service, but both have consistently opposed pay raises for their sacrifices.
While we are often told that both major parties have polarized the country and that both organizations have been hijacked by extremists on the right and the left respectively, in fact both parties have moved to the left. It is simply that the leadership of the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left that the more moderate liberals of the Republican Party, are now considered to be ‘conservative.’
Rugged individualism, smaller government, and sticking to your guns to do what is right were all once Republican ideals. President Ronald Reagan was once the standard-bearer for those ideals. If Reagan was alive today, he would be ashamed of his party.
Many conservatives will simply stay home on election day, a few will even cast a vote for Obama to repay McCain for years of disloyalty to his own party. If Obama wins, McCain will have no one to blame but himself.
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