Giving Drunken Sailors a Bad Name

How far out of control is spending in the Republican-controlled halls of government? In very current articles, Alan Greenspan, Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, and even local GOP shill Greg Garrison call out the Republicans on spending.

Garrison's article is largely incoherent rambling. In between, he managed to accurately sum up the thoughts of anyone who voted Republican in 2004 and isn't living in complete denial:

But his stewardship of the people's money and his vision for the role of government in our lives have left me more than disappointed with his leadership of Congress and his direction of his own administration.

Or, as Glenn McCoy's recent cartoon summed up...


The Noblesville Daily Times ran the McCoy cartoon and the Garrison article on the Viewpoint page today. The drumbeat is growing. Per Buchanan, at World Net Daily:

The Taft-Goldwater-Reagan-Helms Republicans were prepared to pay the political price for saying "No." But just as the Democrats of the 1930s found the formula for permanent power in "tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect," as Harold Ickes Sr. put it, the Bush Republicans and Big Government conservatives of the 1990s believe they have found an even surer formula for permanent power: "Cut taxes, spend and spend, elect and elect."

Per Novak, at Town Hall, discussing the treatment given Indiana's Mike Pence for daring to be a fiscal conservative:

Pence was far more discreet in Tuesday's session with his party's leadership, but that did not save him a going over, led by two powerful committee chairmen: Rep. Don Young (Transportation Committee) and Rep. Bill Thomas (Ways and Means
Committee). The harshest treatment of Pence, however, was administered by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who does not like his rank-and-file members depicting a free-spending Republican Party.

Even though Pence is correct, and it's absolutely true. It is incredible to think that President Bush has not used he veto power even once... until you recall and consider the formula identified by Buchanan above. Republican leaders like Tom DeLay don't want fiscal conservatives to be shown enough of the Goldwater-Reagan legacy to think carefully about it. They want fiscal conservatives to waste their votes on the GOP on the mere, fading memory of those legends, despite the reality of the spending actions of the Republican-led Congress.

Mona Charon, the American Conservative Union, Matt Towery, the Cato Institute... these aren't the liberals calling out the GOP. Five years of denial is enough for them.

The real question is: have you had enough? Isn't it enough that the GOP has ushered in more real liberalism than the Democrats could have? Isn't it enough that no Democrats had to be elected President, or gain control of Congress, in order to have their agenda so thoroughly advanced?

When you've had enough, and have decided that you are serious about smaller government, with lower spending, the only sane thing you can do is back Libertarian candidates (or become one), and vote Libertarian.