Food for thought…

Just got home late this Saturday evening and was catching up with my pile of e-mail from today.

I have a lot of stuff about the NY-23 race, where the Republicans picked Dede Scozzafava (a liberal who would be the dictionary definition of Republican In Name Only), but a number of conservative groups have placed their support behind the upstart Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman.

The item I’m pondering is this: many is the time where I’ve stayed loyal to the GOP despite their nominating a “moderate” – John McCain and Wayne Gilchrest come to mind, cases where I’ve had to hold my nose and vote for someone to my left. Why is it that the GOP brass always expect me to come to the left and rarely (if ever) support a candidate to their right?

In most cases one could argue I’m more at home in the Libertarian Party but I’d rather work from within this one. And I believe I have a lot of allies who are among those newly baptized politically over the last eight months (Julie, the Right Coast Girl, comes to mind.)

To succeed in this quest, the political landscape needs to have what is now considered the middle shifted back to its proper place leftward. Right-of-center is truly the center (yes Chuck, I’m making that argument) and we who participate in the debate need to stop accepting most of the premises that liberals put up, such as the one that there’s a government solution to our health care problem – the government need not become more involved because the problem, by and large, doesn’t really exist for most.

I was at a friend’s house today and noticed a quote from Martin O’Malley saying something to the effect that those of us who favor limited government are seeing what the result would be in Maryland because he’s had to make all sorts of cuts. After I laughed out loud, it occurred to me that he’s making the cuts in areas where it hurts the most without truly making the effort to figure out just where government needs to get out of people’s lives. My first suggestion is for the state to stop spending millions to buy previously private land and take it off the tax rolls; in fact, the state could probably make millions back by selling back some of these properties. Who knows, someone might actually develop it and increase the property value, which will (gasp!) put more money in the local and state coffers.

So let’s see what people have to say about this. I think I stepped on enough toes for this to solicit good comments.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.