Drumbeat Continues to Continue

Today's Indy Star editorial calls the GOP out on ethics and out-of-control spending. From the editorial:

Republicans have reason to worry

Our position: House leadership increasingly shows signs that it's arrogant and out of touch. The word from Washington is that Republicans who have been in control of the U.S. House for the past 11 years are worried about their prospects in next year's midterm elections. They should be.

And not only because Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted this week on charges that he violated Texas election laws.
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House Republicans' problems, however, neither start nor end with DeLay. The leadership in particular has been sending the same type of arrogant and out-of-touch signals that cost Democrats their majority in 1994. Witness the dressing-down Indiana's Mike Pence recently suffered from House Speaker Dennis Hastert for daring to observe that federal spending is out of control.

Smart Republicans, both in the House and elsewhere, should take the DeLay indictment as a warning. Either live and govern by the principles that supposedly guide the party or prepare to lose power.

People of principle would have done so without requiring the fear of a backlash. Alas. The Pence case shows that the GOP has no commitment to smaller government and restrained spending. Honest fiscal conservatives need to disassociate themselves from the Republican Party in order to remain clean. They need to support the Libertarian Party.

Here's a message to the Star, who is late on this missive. The word across Indiana from fiscal conservatives is deep dissatisfaction with the GOP's misuse- or underuse- of their majorities at the Federal and State levels. These voters have expected tax cuts, spending cuts, even the evaporation of a few levels of bureaucracy. Instead, taxes have gone up, spending has gone up, and new levels of bureaucracy were added.

Libertarians will get the job done.