When I was growing up, Republicans had some appeal.
As president, Ronald Reagan championed a dramatic reduction and simplification of the tax code. He also stood for a strong dollar. A decade later, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got a democrat president to sign-off on welfare reform, deregulation, and lower investment taxes.
Whatever has moved many Republicans away from such policy nationally, we got an up-close view of it here locally this recent primary season. The problem is the establishment and activist hangers-on: they either don’t know any better, or have ulterior motives.
These are the worst people to have any influence over busy voters.
Being part of the establishment isn’t necessarily bad, but too often it seems to come at the expense of principle. How else to explain helping a Republican officeholder who supports higher spending, higher taxes, and raising his own pay?
Those actions were flippantly excused away by the apologists. “Maybe there was some specific spending the he wanted.” “It was a bi-partisan commission that recommended the pay raise.” “He cut taxes by raising exemptions.”
Weak. Inexcusable. Deceptive.
On the other side of the aisle, a Democratic county commissioner refused to vote for a budget because there wasn’t enough spending. The Republican, who couldn’t garner support for the spending cuts he claims he wanted, voted for it anyway.
Is this the new definition of conservative fiscal discipline? Regrettably, this has been a growing trend in recent decades as more and more supposed conservatives have done the same. But even the last vestige of conservative fiscal policy is now under attack; taxes.
For their part, the left never met a tax they didn’t like. But even they need to win elections. So, when the opportunity arises to appear as if they’re ‘providing’ relief, they jump at it. Voila; property tax (homestead) exemptions!
The dirty little secret is, the benefits are fleeting. This is because of bad federal monetary policy that chases investors to safer assets, like housing. Hence, home values keep artificially rising, pushing a homeowner’s tax bill back to where it was before exemptions were raised.
Now, not only are nominal conservatives on the national level OK with a weak dollar, but local ones are happy to keep raking in the subsequent largesse to spend on their pet projects. Or, help out friends as it were.
Is this what alleged Republican leadership looks like now? So tangled in their mental gymnastics that, on the one hand, they’ll cite safeguarding taxpayer funds to defend seizing property via eminent domain, while on the other voting to raise those same taxes.
When did establishment republicans so lose their bearings?
It naturally leads one to believe that their kowtowing activist supporters are hoping to get in on this someday. It’s all a game to them. They want the chance to distribute the loot from a position of power, or be on the receiving end, or both.
A left-leaning friend once asked me “shouldn’t we just deal with the government we have?” It might be confusing to him to know he has so much company on the right. Do the latter not see they’re simply aiding the former in guiding us downhill?
Granted, thanks to our long history of wealth-enabling freedom, we’re a ways away from cripplingly cannibalizing it like Venezuela has, for example. But if, as has been proven, such policies inevitably lead to that, why enact them at all?
Why not stand on the principles of freedom, accountability, respect for private property where societal wealth is created? Make the big-government left own the policies that erode all this.
To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi in his last words to Anakin Skywalker, Republicans were meant to oppose democrats, not join them.
