Lesson learned? Too little and about 9 months too late.
Welcome to those of you reading this through Carnival of Maryland 12.
One thing about doing my website and being active in the Republican Party is that I get quite the number of press releases and talking points from the party apparatus. For the most part, I just save them as background information unless I see something that I think is interesting to share and comment on.
So yesterday I got a note from the Maryland Republican Party regarding an op-ed placed in The Hill by House Minority Leader John Boehner. This is credited as originating out of Rep. Boehner’s office. Some excerpts:
In January I wrote in The Hill that after our losses last November, House Republicans “must recommit to the principles of limited and accountable government.” Here we are, seven months into the 110th Congress, and I’m pleased to report we’re doing just that.
Republicans are working together to earn back the majority by first earning back the trust of the American people. And while Democrats are divided and breaking their promises on issue after issue, House Republicans have repeatedly spoken with one voice.
(snip)
When you look back at the last several months, it’s clear the Democratic majority hasn’t gotten much done. They’ve named some post offices and some roads, protected one of their own from being reprimanded and impeded an investigation of another for violating House rules, plotted to hide billions in spending from public view, spent a whole week on a single nonbinding resolution, and failed to meet their own “Energy Independence Day” deadline for dramatic energy legislation.
(snip)
Republicans have a long way to go in our effort to earn back the majority, but the last several months have shown we are united and proving our commitment to delivering a federal government that will guarantee the freedom and security Americans expect; a government that is smaller, less costly and more accountable — one that will secure our borders and protect Americans from attack by radical jihadists.
The American people sent Republicans a message last fall. We’ve listened. Seven months into the 110th Congress, Republicans are keeping their promises to the American people; it’s fair to say the majority can’t say the same.
Unfortunately, Boehner fails to mention that the GOP caved on allowing a minimum wage increase (as it was tied into one of the Long War supplemental bills) and that the front on the Long War is not quite united when it comes to the Republican Party – our own Congressman regularly breaks from the GOP line when it comes to that vital issue.
However, some of the problem that the Republican Party is going through can be traced to a lack of leadership at the top. I know President Bush likes to talk about the “new tone” but, like his father, he’s let the Democrats run too much of the policy of our nation. Truly, just about the only things that have happened under his watch that the majority of Democrats didn’t go along with in some way, shape, or form were the 2001/2003 tax cuts and, since roughly the middle of 2003, the military side of the Long War. (Obviously in 2002 it wasn’t yet politically expedient to be anti-military unless you came from a truly moonbat Congressional district.)
Some of us in the GOP came of age under President Reagan, and while he didn’t accomplish all of the goals he originally set for his presidency (particularly in the realm of reducing the size of government) he did manage to jump start a moribund economy domestically through his tax cuts and subdue the Soviet threat. We were spoiled by his sort of leadership – and as you may recall, he endured a Democrat-controlled Congress throughout the eight years of his tenure.
Well, neither President Bush has been a Ronald Reagan, and to me part of that lies in the fact that both strayed to an extent from Republican principles. The elder Bush believed the Congressional Democrat lies about cutting the size of government once new taxes were in place (the infamous “read my lips” line) and Bush 43 has presided over ever-expanding budgets while federalizing the education system through No Child Left Behind and adding another expensive entitlement in Medicare Part D.
In short, what Boehner points out is only that the GOP has managed to very slightly slow the tide of increasing federal government control over our lives. Unfortunately, once we lost the majority after the 2006 elections we forefited most of our chance to roll back the amount of power the federal government can bear. And since the Congressional GOP was by and large trying to act like a lesser version of big-government liberal Democrats during the 109th Congress, the GOP base decided to stay home in 2006.
While many pundits talk about the slow, steady drumbeat of bad news about the Long War as doing in the GOP majority last year and claim that if the troops aren’t home before the 2008 elections it will doom the Republican Party once again, I think the GOP needs to do all it can to hammer home a very simple point.
If we leave Iraq and Afghanistan before the enemy is subdued, we most assuredly lose and the terrorists win. Because the Democrats are in favor of this so-called tactical retreat, they want us to lose. President Reagan refused to negotiate with terrorists, and to me that’s still a sound policy.
America already lost one war because the Democrats and media drumbeat of bad news turned public opinion against the military and the fight. And I’m old enough to recall that once America retreated, we saw the barbarism of the communist North Vietnamese and their fellow traveler Pol Pot in Cambodia (the “killing fields”.)
Moreover, if we pull out of the Long War, it will once again prove to the Islamic fundamentalists that we cannot take casualties. Osama bin Laden himself noted that President Clinton’s 1993 Somalia pullout (“Black Hawk down”) showed him we were a “paper tiger”. It’s also been pointed out that the retreat President Reagan made from Lebanon after the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983 that killed over 200 Marines emboldened anti-American forces in the region.
We’ll never be blessed with another President quite like Ronald Reagan. But it’s time for the Republican Party to take the offensive in our own war, the war of ideas. Principled Republican leadership that believes in strong national defense, securing our borders, and placing trust in the American people to govern themselves and not have government act as a nanny state will be a winning election formula. It’s up to our leaders and candidates to embrace that policy.
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hey michael,
we will have another leader like reagan, it is just a matter of time… perhaps after hillary is impeached… but until the elected stops acting like nobility and the electorate demand substance over showmanship, we’ll have to suffer…
but america is the greatest thing on this planet and we may stumble, but as charlie daniels sings… “this lady may have stumbled, but she ain’t never fell…”
and the majority will awaken soon to the fact that we should be a bit cocky and demand more from the rest of the world, because we are the reason fascists and dictators fall.
teeman
ps- caught you on the radio… perhaps you can take the place of j.r. when he leaves.
You have me for the whole hour next Friday…John was looking for a guest and asked me to “debate” the Long War with him. Friday is a day I can fit in with the work schedule so it should be interesting.
the long war is nothing like wars used to be… where the country actually sacrificed to win… this war is only long in the duration, no rationing, no war bond drives, no scrap drives, comparitively little casualties to wars in the past. the only thing long about it is the whining of those who can’t stand to see the americans come out on top… which would be a stable iraq founded on the rule of law and the protection of the individual rights of man… we have them written out and we should encourage the iraqis to model their system on ours.
john bends with the breeze and doesn’t have the constitution to stick out unpleasantries of super power diplomacy…
i don’t have to tell you but john thinks the war in iraq is not part of the war on terror.
i will listen.
teeman
[...] Michael Swartz from monoblogue says “Yes, I was on a rant and roll – but I think it’s time to rally OUR troops too.” More at Lesson learned? Too little and about 9 months too late. [...]