On Being a Republican

By Alan Caruba

It has been hard to be a Republican this past year and those leading up to the last elections. If Democrats found their voice in their bitter hatred of George W. Bush, his actions over the past four and previous years in office left Republicans breathless as both he and the Republican-held Congress engaged in an orgy of bewildering spending.

As power passed from the Party in 2006, one would have hoped for a more chastened, more sober Republican Party, but the momentum had shifted and the Democrats found a charismatic candidate in Barack Obama.

The choice of John McCain, though opposed in many Republican and conservative circles for his inclination to vote with Democrats, his pro-immigration position, his espousal of global warming falsehoods, left us with a choice between two candidates for whom no Republican could vote for without distaste and disdain. The introduction to the political scene of Gov. Palin was too little, too late. Her family problems just keep growing.

It is no accident that America is mired in a financial disaster that mirrors an era when “irrational exuberance” reined. The sins of George W. Bush are too numerous, but the legacy of No Child Left Behind was to cede control of the schools—always a local priority—to the federal government. All the statistics in the world will not hide the fact that we are graduating students ill-prepared for the workplace and those who want to acquire a higher education must accept a level of debt that is obscene. In my home State of New Jersey, the loan defaults are reaching a billion dollars.

“We must keep the American people informed of the Democrat’s efforts to impose socialistic, inefficient, and dangerously utopian policies in Washington,” wrote Robert M. “Mike” Duncan, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. What could have been more socialistic than the addition of a prescription entitlement to Medicare? It was a Republican initiative. Same with No Child Left Behind.

“Despite the election’s result, American remains a center-right country,” wrote Duncan. “We will learn from our experience, sharpen our message, and continue to stand for our core principles of low taxation, personal responsibility, and strong national security, and earn victories in elections to come.”

Where were those Republican principles since the year 2000? It is telling that the only success Republicans can point to is that since 2001 the nation has not been attacked again. There is no guarantee that future attacks will not occur. A bulky, oversized bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security has put the CIA in charge while undermining the FBI’s traditional role of counter-intelligence on the domestic front. Are the security agencies working better together? We have no way of knowing.

There is no question that the incoming Democrat Party will tilt toward the unions such as those that undermined Detroit’s competitiveness. There is the possibility of massive tax increases at the worst possible time for such actions, and there is the threat of limits on free speech such as the discredited notion of “balance” in the talk radio and television.

Worse, though, is the fact that the Obama administration will base its most fundamental policies on a global warming that is not happening and which has been proven to be a hoax based on falsified “scientific” data. The corruption of science is a crime against humanity. The imposition of regulations and laws based on global warming will cripple the nation’s economy further and leave us without sufficient energy sources for the future.

So, this Republican will renew his membership in 2009 and pray that the Party regains its courage, its discipline with regard to its core principles, and finds legislators and new candidates to articulate the dangers inherent in Democrat Party control of the nation.