More Catch Up From SpinDaddy

Since I last had time to blog in earnest a lot has happened in politix. The GOP lost control of the US Congress and more recently the Executive branch as well.

As Miles Davis would say. So What?

Frankly; they deserved to lose, as they were governing in a sort of stupor of merely being hopeful that they could keep the brakes on the precipitous slide to the left this country is in. They almost completely abandoned their base; which politically speaking is tantamount to committing suicide.

I'm paraphrasing here; but, George Will summed up American politics probably the most accurately when during the early Nineties he described the difference between the GOP (Republican is probably too strong a term to describe the party anymore as most of them have no clue what a republic is or how it differs from a democracy) and the Democrats. Remember I am paraphrasing from memory here; but, Will said that Should the Democrats pass a measure to burn down the Library of Congress, the Republicans could surely be counted on to stamp their feet and demand that it be burned down in stages! I believe Will was using the Library of Congress as a metaphor for any American institution. Free enterprise, state sovereignty, moral institutions, capitalism, freedom of speech, etc.

Governing with the goal of merely hoping to slow the slide toward socialism is insufficient to the needs of the Republic. Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract With America gimmick is a fantastic illustration of this.

Actual progress towards undoing some of more abusive manifestations of creeping socialism is what is necessary, not attempts or lame excuses. The Contract With America was a promise by congressional republicans to bring ten (conservative) measures up for debate and a vote in the US House of Representatives if they were able to attain majority status. This was appealing because the democrats who were running the place before wouldn't even allow these items to come to the floor for debate; let alone a vote.

Newt and the GOP got their majority and fulfilled the letter of the promise but most were promptly killed by weak Nancy-boys in the Senate who could not be bothered with such foolishness as what the majority of the nation was clamoring for. That the majority of the nation wanted this is evidenced by the overwhelming political upset that brought the GOP to the majority in the Senate in 1994 in the first place!

The GOP did manage roll back some federal nonsense and meddling such as the National Mandatory Highway Speed Limit. The dreaded 55mph speed limit (later raised to 65mph). Guess what? The highway safety and consumer-advocate-RalphNader-type ninny's are crowing about bringing it back. This was and is good, but the point is that the GOP failed to rollback any significant measures that are creeping into our lives more and more everyday. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the latest Obama powergrab under the guise of fixing our "failed" economic system. Now his team of nanny-state-cliphaired-meanies are going to set compensation levels, mitigate risk, more and more command control marxist horse dookey.

I was also disappointed by Ronald Reagan's failure to actually rollback any significant federal government foolishness. Such as the federal departments of education and energy created under Jimmuh Carter and which Reagan campaigned on dissolving. My understanding is that the executive is responsible to me for running these departments. Reagan could very simply have appointed secretaries to each department and call them in his office and inform them that they had thirty days to dissolve the department and put the keys on his desk.

This would have been completely consistent with his style of governing. But today we still have a federal department of education meddling in; or worse, the purely local function of educating our children. The department of energy has yet to form a cogent NATIONAL energy policy. They meddle plenty, they couldn't produce and erg of energy if they tried.

I remember before the midterm election that cost the GOP control; sitting around the dinner table with my lovely wife as she had asked me what I thought was going to happen. I explained that it was very likely that the GOP would lose control, and that would begin a significant leftward lurch in policy direction that would eventually turn us into Europe-lite. The Leftward lurch has since become a violent snap roll to the left which I am hopeful will awaken what Nixon called the silent majority, as they are getting a belly full of this leftist socialist-wannabe nonsense.

The overwhelming majority citizens that make up this country are not socialist, their is a deeply ingrained American instinct to take care of ourselves by ourselves, just stay out of our way. When someone abuses our economic system punish them not me. -SpinDaddy