I recently received a message from the New Jersey Republican Party urging me to lobby my Senators to vote against the so-called "stimulus plan". While I certainly oppose this legislation, I found their position so obviously hypocritical that I was insulted. Here is my reply to them.
I am certainly concerned about the vast amounts of waste that our nation’s leaders seem intent on creating, not to mention the damage that will be caused by the moral hazard of bailing out those who are victim only to their own greed or bad judgment.However, I must say that I find it insulting to hear the Republican Party pontificating on the subject. This party has squandered any credibility with regards to fiscal responsibility in the past several years. The Republicans, controlling the Executive branch and both houses of the Legislature, presided over the largest peacetime growth of the federal government in our history. From Medicare Part D to runaway budgetary pork, the GOP has been two-faced, preaching the Reagan “limited government” gospel while its actions were profligate and irresponsible. How can the Republican Party claim to stand for fiscal responsibility when the ink is still wet on to George W. Bush’s last minute gifts to the auto industry?
In the past months the Republicans have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Democrats in declaring that something—anything—must be done, and that times of such crisis force us to look beyond our own ideologies. In such statements, all of our leaders have revealed that they really hold no principles.
Indeed, I find that even today, the Party continues to try for its cake while eating it, too. You assert that you will not “join in the parade of pigs looking to feather their own nest and pass the bill to future generations”, but we only have to look at Governors Charlie Crist, Tim Pawlenty, and even vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who are begging for bailout money, to see the duplicity.
This financial debacle is sufficient to indict them; there is no reason to dig further, into issues like the so-called “free speech zones” or the Bush administration’s position in the Heller case or flagrant violations of so many other liberties that my ancestors fought for.
When the Republican Party can get its own house in order; when it can show me that its members understand the limitations on the Federal Government as written, for example, in the Constitution’s Article II Section 8 or its Ninth and Tenth Amendments; then it can ask for my support. But for now, when the only thing that is really being protected is the corruption in Washington DC and in State capitals throughout America, the Republican Party deserves nothing but contempt.
In the interest of these great United States,
Chris Wuestefeld