I’m embarrassed that Congressmen Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat from the Central Valley, would be able to get ‘ink’ in the newspaper attacking the Republican leaders of Congress for running up deficits and poor fiscal management.
"The Republican Party has abandoned fiscal conservatism and embraced a budget system with no accountability," he said. (The short article is linked on the FR main page.)
Why embarrassed? I’m embarrassed for the opportunity lost. That the Republican Party nationally has an elected GOP President and members of our Party hold a majority of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, yet, there has been growth, not reduction, in federal spending in Washington.
The GOP watched and decried the Democrat controlled Congress who, for years, increased the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy. In 1994, after two years of Bill Clinton, the voters had enough of this irresponsibility, and put Congress in the hands of the GOP. I can understand, with Clinton in the White House for another six years, the challenges of trying to reduce spending (kind of). But now, with GOP control of the Presidency and Congress, there is no excuse.
Which takes me back to the ’embarrassment’ that I started with at the top of this brief commentary. It is time for some self-policing to take place within the GOP. It is said that the reason why we haven’t had big cuts in the size of the federal government is because of a handful of so-called ‘moderate’ Republicans are opposing real fiscal reform. This gets back to my theory that there is no such thing as a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republican. There is nothing more "fiscal" than overspending by the government.
So, I say let’s take it to these moderates. Let them cast their votes against the basic party tenant of limited government. And then let’s go out and recruit primary opponents for each of them, and let them articulate to their GOP constituents why they are in favor of a fat, bloated federal government. The President can endorse challengers, and go out on the stump. His legacy-gift to the GOP as he finishes his time in office can be a Republican Congress with a REAL majority of votes that subscribe to the GOP platform on fiscal issues.
Of course, is any of this likely to happen? Probably not.
There are too many who believe that the GOAL of political parties is to elect party members to office. That isn’t the goal. That is the means to the goal. The actual goal of a political party is public policy victories. It is seeing that the vision and policies set out in that party’s platform become the reality. When a party has a majority in government, and isn’t achieving its goals, then the party needs to retool its efforts, and continue to elect more officeholders that agree with the party platform, even if it means retiring some registered members of its own party.
So, in Washington D.C., we challenge the Ken Mehlman, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee to establish a national plan for pushing these ‘iffy’ GOPers into voting in-line with our party’s policy-goals, or pushing for their retirement (through political means).
Here in California, State GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim should be ID’ing whether any of these ‘bad votes’ on spending cuts are from the Golden State. If so, he should be leading the effort to shame these GOPers (in their safe seats) into getting on board with the GOP.
What is at stake? If we don’t step up as a party, both our elected party leaders, as well as party members in positions of leadership in government, we may lose our majorities, and have no one to blame but ourselves.