Re: Why Conservatives Should Vote for Kerry

From: FranklinJefferson (franklinjefferson_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/30/04 

Date: 30 Oct 2004 07:56:29 -0700

Yes, exactly.

The biggest factor in whether goverenment spending goes up or down is
whether the president and the congress are from the same party
(spending up!) or opposite parties (spending down!)

As president, Bush created the biggest deficit in American history.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/national/main632421.shtml

He is financially reckless.

Again, the point is that if Kerry is president, the Republican
congress will keep him in check. If Bush is elected, *nothing* will
keep him, and the congress, out of the public trough.

master_blaster100@lycos.com (Jon) wrote in message news:<e1c97c16.0410261956.4f245657@posting.google.com>...
> Re: Why Conservatives Should Vote for Kerry
>
> This is not new thought-- Brian Doherty made the case that gridlock would be
> the best thing for the government back in July, and concluded:
> "As paradoxical as it seems, for those who believe in the Republican
> Party that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan promised, Kerry may be
> their greatest realistic chance to express their support for
> preserving that tradition."
>
>
> From http://www.lewrockwell.com/ocregister/kerry-doherty.html :
>
> A case for Kerry
> In praise of gridlock: In the past, growth of federal spending has
> slowed only when the national government was divided
>
> By Brian Doherty
>
> Can you imagine Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate
> Majority Leader Bill Frist proudly standing beside President John
> Kerry in a Rose Garden signing ceremony as he signs a bill that they
> handed him - a bill that will increase government spending over the
> next decade by more than half a trillion? Especially if that bill
> would give Democrat Kerry the loyalty of a politically powerful
> constituency?
>
> Of course, the GOP's congressional leadership did help President
> George W. Bush - their own party's man - pass his Medicare bill, whose
> projected costs keep rising above that budget-busting level. In fact,
> Bush, with the exception of his tax cuts, has been a shockingly
> big-government conservative.
>
> It's an insight of libertarianism and a key reason this newspaper does
> not endorse candidates for office that politicians can't be trusted to
> deliver on the principles they might verbalize. In fact, politicians
> can be trusted only to be politicians, to work for partisan advantage
> and more political power.
>
> That's why, in the context of November's election, a victory for
> Kerry, who will finally officially become the Democrats'
> standard-bearer in Boston this Thursday - even though he's a
> big-government man all the way - could paradoxically be the most
> likely hope for curbing excessive government growth in the next four
> years. Why? The party stereotypes don't always hold up, and a
> Democratic president and a Congress led by Republicans creates a kind
> of institutional impasse that actually slows the momentum of
> government.
>
> It seems counterintuitive, though, to expect limited government from a
> Democratic president. Ever since the Goldwater vs. LBJ contest of
> 1964, the two major parties have staked out rough philosophical
> positions along these lines: the Republicans are, at least
> rhetorically, for a lean and limited government; the Democrats are
> unreconstructed advocates of state power, state spending and state
> solutions to every problem.
>
> But the facts - the performance of the parties when they have the
> power - have never borne that out. We got such regulatory state
> measures as the Clean Air Act and wage and price controls under Nixon,
> and the Americans with Disabilities Act under the first George Bush.
> And it was under Democrat Bill Clinton that we got meaningful welfare
> reform that has knocked nearly 3 million families off the federal dole
> so far, even as child poverty rates shrink.
>
> But the most vivid example that Republicans can't be relied on as
> consistent defenders of smaller government is our current Republican
> president. Bush has increased domestic discretionary spending 25
> percent in less than four years, compared to an increase under Clinton
> over his entire two terms of only 10 percent.
>
> Bush's administration is spending over $20,000 per American household,
> the highest level, adjusted for inflation, since World War II. He
> can't blame it on war and post-9/11 security measures alone, either.
> Even with those taken out of the equation, according to an analysis by
> the usually GOP-leaning Heritage Foundation, discretionary spending
> under Bush has increased 16 percent, from $340 billion to $395
> billion.
>
> And then there's his Medicare expansion. Clinton had an opposition
> Congress to curb his health-care expansion enthusiasms; Bush, alas,
> had a GOP Congress mostly compliant to his wishes.
>
> Bush has betrayed the humble, restrained small-government vision of
> the Republican Party in other ways as well, for example, by engaging
> in a spectacularly expensive nation-building project in Iraq, despite
> talking intelligently against that sort of big-government hubris while
> campaigning in 2000. He's shown no firm dedication to free-trade
> principles, hiking tariffs on steel and shrimp. He's supported
> restrictions on free political speech by signing the McCain-Feingold
> campaign finance reform bill.
>
> This is not to say a Republican Congress (which seems very likely to
> stay Republican after November) will always have the clout to stymie
> any tax-raising, big-spending, big-program instincts Kerry may have.
> But it seems reasonable to assume that it would.
>
> Given the likely results of 2004's congressional elections, Kerry's
> desires to be a bigger-government president than Bush will doubtless
> be curbed through the logic of partisan conflict and "divided
> government" - when the executive and legislative branch are controlled
> by opposing parties.
>
> Nothing is certain when contemplating the political future. But we do
> know some things about the recent political past that should help
> guide a strategic voter who wants smaller government: In the past,
> divided government has shown great power to curb federal spending. As
> William Niskanen, a former chairman of President Reagan's Council of
> Economic Advisers, has noted, the only two post-World War II periods
> of genuine restraint in federal spending growth (with annual increases
> of less than 1 percent) came during the Eisenhower and Clinton
> administrations. Both presidents mostly lacked Congresses controlled
> by their parties.
>
> It couldn't be clearer that the combination of Bush in the White House
> and a GOP-dominated Congress has been a disaster when it comes to
> curbing the growth of government spending and programs. It might just
> be that partisan spite can make a Republican Congress do the right
> thing where a principled dedication to reining in government seems
> MIA. When GOP lawmakers don't have the political reputation of their
> party's standard-bearer to protect, they are more likely to stiffen
> their spines and help obstruct much of the damage that John Kerry
> might attempt.
>
> And if George Bush doesn't receive some electoral punishment for his
> profligate ways, the Republican Party's value as a vehicle for
> limiting government will plunge lower than a 10-year-old Ford Escort.
> Bush might earn some short-term electoral advantage through expensive
> schemes like his Medicare reform. But such schemes are sure to
> bankrupt the republic in the long run. His own party's Congress won't
> stop him. They just might stop President John Kerry.
>
> As paradoxical as it seems, for those who believe in the Republican
> Party that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan promised, Kerry may be
> their greatest realistic chance to express their support for
> preserving that tradition.

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