"A view of the world means you might like London and I might prefer Paris, but each preference can be equally valid because it is a matter of individual taste. A correct worldview is a way of not just looking at other countries and people, but having an intellectual and moral center that allows one to distinguish between good and evil; right and wrong; sound economic, social and political policies and bad ones. There is a reason America is what it is. The economic power and military might are effects, not causes of America’s greatness. It is because we offer the lives of our young and much of our fortune to defend liberty for ourselves and promote it for others that we are blessed with liberty. Too many other countries—especially European countries—receive liberty as America’s gift, but contribute little to it."
— Cal Thomas
Showing posts with label GOP Principles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP Principles. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, December 07, 2007
Bumper-Sticker Peaceniks
Patriot PostIn his essay “The Contest In America,” 19th-century libertarian philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill wrote, “[W]ar... is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.”
Mill added, “A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
Some 150 years later, there is no shortage of “miserable creatures” flaunting their “decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling,” with bumper-sticker slogans: “Peace... Coexist... War is not the answer... Imagine... I’m already against the next war... Wage Peace... Christianity is bombing in the Middle East... Quagmire Accomplished... Bush lied troops died,” et cetera, ad nauseam, infinitum.
These are not the descendants of the Early American peace movement, which can rightfully trace its origins to non-interventionists and pacifists. These are instead the effluent of the “Pop Peace Cult,” which coalesced as a socio-political force in the 1960s, unifying as a radical outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement.
It is these pusillanimous pantywaists, “daring” to conform to the pop-peace code of non-conformity—who constitute “the ugliest of things.”
Today’s peaceniks are fashionably fronted by “Useful Idiots,” ‘60s Leftovers, Hollywood glitterati, pop-music stars and the Leftist political elite.
This sect of les miserables, and their traitorous protagonists both in Congress and out campaigning for the White House, insist that they are “against war but support our troops.”
That’s a BIG lie, a more bald-faced fib, fabrication and falsehood than was ever uttered by the infamous Prevaricator in Chief, Bill Clinton.
Fact is, the underlying supposition of today’s pop-peace envoys was framed by “entertainers” like 60s folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who, in his song “Alice’s Restaurant,” mimics an Army recruit: “I wanna kill! Kill! Eat dead burnt bodies!” to which the recruiting Sergeant replied, “You’re our boy.”
This contention—that those in uniform were “baby killers” —was cemented in the 70s by Leftists such as John Kerry and “Hanoi Jane” Fonda.
Kerry and company are on the frontlines of today’s so-called “peace movement,” and they enjoy unlimited promotion of their propaganda by Leftmedia outlets like Newsweek magazine.
What their mindless minions miss, however, is that the heart of a warrior, a real warrior, desires peace, a real peace. For insight into the hearts of real Patriot warriors, read about Vietnam Vets Roger Ingvalson (USAF) and Roger Helle.
America’s uniformed Patriots don’t put “Peace” bumper stickers on their cars. They put their lives on the line to ensure the constitutional rights of adolescent peaceniks to sport bumper stickers. They are not “stuck in Iraq,” as Kerry claims, because they are ignorant dupes “going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing women and children...”
It is Kerry and his arrogant, tailor-suited colleagues, who terrorize families by refusing to honor their oaths to “Support and Defend” our Constitution.
Peacenik slogans and privileged politicos not withstanding, American Patriotism is alive and well outside the Beltway. Just ask pop artiste Natalie Maines, lead singer for that Texas trio known as the Dixie Chicks. Her condescending comment, ten days before the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a case study in how not to insult your country, and country-music fans.
At a concert in Europe, Maines told her peacenik fans on that continent, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” She was applauded there, but her remark unleashed a firestorm of protest back home.
Maines feigned regret a week later: “I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.”
Nobody bought it. The Chicks were chucked off the charts. Their nomination for the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year award two months later was lustily booed, and the award went to Toby Keith, an outspoken critic of such anti-American sentiments as theirs.
Bravo Zulu, Toby!
At the time, President Bush offered this dignified retort: “The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say. If some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that’s fine. That’s the great thing about America... in stark contrast to Iraq [under Saddam].”
The Dixie Chicks have never recovered their standing with “salt of the earth” fans of country music, and so were forced to carve out a new niche in a less-patriotic genre—rock music. Maines lamented, “I don’t understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? I don’t see why people care about patriotism.”
Neither do today’s peaceniks, but the Dixie Chicks’ lesson isn’t lost on contemporary pop-peace performers, who are now resorting to lyrics from dead guys like ex-Beatle John Lennon.
Amnesty International is the beneficiary of proceeds from a new music CD, “Instant Karma,” featuring Lennon songs performed by various noisemakers. Ah yes, “imagine” John Lennon, that humble soul who proclaimed at the height of Beatles’ fame in the 60s, “Christianity will go. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
Fortunately for our nation, wiser heads have prevailed for most of our history. Our Founding Fathers understood the relationship between peace and strength, and this timeless lesson has been passed on from one generation to the next.
“To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace,” said George Washington. “Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace,” said Thomas Jefferson. “A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts,” said James Madison. Or, in ancient Latin, Si vis pacem para bellum.
Ronald Reagan certainly understood this principle of “peace through strength” —which is why there no longer exists a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Unfortunately, Bill Clinton did not.
The Clinton administration eviscerated the military in the years after his predecessor’s remarkably successful Operation Desert Storm. It emboldened the nascent jihadi movement by treating terrorism as a “criminal matter” rather than surrogate warfare—warfare that would visit our shores on the morning of 11 September 2001.
Bill Clinton never understood the fundamental relationship between peace and strength.
Neither does Hillary.
Monday, November 05, 2007
The Real Inconvenient Truth
Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore believes global warming is ‘an inconvenient truth.’ Here are some economic truths that America’s liberal leadership finds too inconvenient to support.
Tax-rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal-tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006. These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal-budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years. Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased... Finally, another inconvenient truth is that there have been 49 consecutive months of job growth as a result of the economic expansion induced by President Bush’s 2003 tax rate reductions.
—Pete du Pont
Tax-rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal-tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006. These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal-budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years. Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased... Finally, another inconvenient truth is that there have been 49 consecutive months of job growth as a result of the economic expansion induced by President Bush’s 2003 tax rate reductions.
—Pete du Pont
Monday, January 15, 2007
Why Martin Luther King Was Republican
by Frances Rice
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.
Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon's 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation's fist goals and timetables. Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.
Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans.
Critics of Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President against Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.
Those who wrongly criticize Goldwater also ignore the fact that Johnson, in his 4,500 State of the Union Address delivered on Jan. 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only 35 words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights. Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King's protest against the Vietnam War, Johnson referred to Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."
Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist "Dixiecrats" did not all migrate to the Republican Party. "Dixiecrats" declared that they would rather vote for a "yellow dog" than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was know as the party for blacks. Today, some of those "Dixiecrats" continue their political careers as Democrats, including Robert Byrd, who is well known for having been a "Keagle" in the Ku Klux Klan.
Another former "Dixiecrat" is former Democrat Sen. Ernest Hollings, who put up the Confederate flag over the state Capitol when he was the governor of South Carolina. There was no public outcry when Democrat Sen. Christopher Dodd praised Byrd as someone who would have been "a great senator for any moment," including the Civil War. Yet Democrats denounced then-Senate GOP leader Trent Lott for his remarks about Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.). Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Byrd and Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.
The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970s with President Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black. Georgia did not switch until 2002, and some Southern states, including Louisiana, are still controlled by Democrats.
Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous.
After wrongly convincing black Americans that a minimum wage increase was a good thing, the Democrats on August 3 kept their promise and killed the minimum wage bill passed by House Republicans on July 29. The blockage of the minimum wage bill was the second time in as many years that Democrats stuck a legislative finger in the eye of black Americans. Senate Democrats on April 1, 2004, blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Clinton before he finally signed it. Since the welfare reform law expired in September 2002, Congress had passed six extensions, and the latest expired on June 30, 2004. Opposed by the Democrats are school choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools and Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).
Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30 to 40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. More than $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans.
In order to break the Democrats' stranglehold on the black vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party's economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty, while Republican Party principles of hard work, personal responsibility, getting a good education and ownership of homes and small businesses offer the pathway to prosperity.
Ms. Rice is chairman of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) and may be contacted at www.NBRA.info.
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.
Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon's 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation's fist goals and timetables. Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.
Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans.
Critics of Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President against Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.
Those who wrongly criticize Goldwater also ignore the fact that Johnson, in his 4,500 State of the Union Address delivered on Jan. 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only 35 words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights. Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King's protest against the Vietnam War, Johnson referred to Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."
Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist "Dixiecrats" did not all migrate to the Republican Party. "Dixiecrats" declared that they would rather vote for a "yellow dog" than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was know as the party for blacks. Today, some of those "Dixiecrats" continue their political careers as Democrats, including Robert Byrd, who is well known for having been a "Keagle" in the Ku Klux Klan.
Another former "Dixiecrat" is former Democrat Sen. Ernest Hollings, who put up the Confederate flag over the state Capitol when he was the governor of South Carolina. There was no public outcry when Democrat Sen. Christopher Dodd praised Byrd as someone who would have been "a great senator for any moment," including the Civil War. Yet Democrats denounced then-Senate GOP leader Trent Lott for his remarks about Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.). Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Byrd and Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.
The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970s with President Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black. Georgia did not switch until 2002, and some Southern states, including Louisiana, are still controlled by Democrats.
Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous.
After wrongly convincing black Americans that a minimum wage increase was a good thing, the Democrats on August 3 kept their promise and killed the minimum wage bill passed by House Republicans on July 29. The blockage of the minimum wage bill was the second time in as many years that Democrats stuck a legislative finger in the eye of black Americans. Senate Democrats on April 1, 2004, blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Clinton before he finally signed it. Since the welfare reform law expired in September 2002, Congress had passed six extensions, and the latest expired on June 30, 2004. Opposed by the Democrats are school choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools and Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).
Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30 to 40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. More than $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans.
In order to break the Democrats' stranglehold on the black vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party's economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty, while Republican Party principles of hard work, personal responsibility, getting a good education and ownership of homes and small businesses offer the pathway to prosperity.
Ms. Rice is chairman of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) and may be contacted at www.NBRA.info.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Why Should the Middle Class Fight Tax Hikes on the Rich?
Michael Medved
It took Nancy Pelosi less than a week as Speaker of the House to begin talking seriously about tax hikes. On “Face the Nation” on CBS this weekend she raised the possibility of increasing the tax burden (by “repealing tax cuts”) for “those making over a certain amount of money, $500,000 a year.” She simultaneously promised tax cuts “for middle class families.”
The political calculation in this pitch is diabolically clever, of course. Nearly all Americans consider themselves “middle class,” no matter how much or how little they make, so her support for reduced taxes for “middle class families” sounds wonderful. Meanwhile, less than 2% of tax returns show income in excess of $500,000 a year so the Speaker is, in effect, inviting 98% of the public to improve their status at the expense of a tiny minority that’s already widely resented because of its “excessive” success.
If you’re nowhere near that $500,000 level where the Democrats say they’ll start punishing you, why should you care if Pelosi & Pals jack up the tax rates on the fortunate few who can afford to fund the rest of us?
Actually, this question’s just as pertinent for me as it for most of the people reading this column since my family (alas) falls below that half-million a year threshold. Yes, I’m lavishly blessed with my job and I’m delighted to earn a great income that provides us with all sorts of privileges, but we’ve never approached the multi-million dollar income that many listeners (thanks to well-publicized deals for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern) associate with successful radio hosts.
In any event, the fact that I might manage to escape unscathed from Pelosi’s proposed tax increases doesn’t make me any less indignant at the idea that she wants to squeeze more from the most productive wealth-creators in our society.
Herewith, three reasons that even those who’ll never earn a half-million a year should oppose these tax hikes, followed by three powerful lessons from the current political situation.
First, the reasons that Americans at every income level should fight against a tax increase on any income level:
1) Tax hikes hurt the economy. Pelosi proposes to take money out of the hands of people whose investment and entrepreneurship create jobs, and to place it into the hands of government, which creates only job-stifling bureaucracies. The idea that federal officials will do a better job spending money than the people who earned it is not only offensive, but profoundly illogical. If Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates makes a few extra million, that money won’t go into a mattress. It will either be used to start new companies or invested somewhere (driving the economy and producing new jobs), or spent on even more lavish mansions and yachts (providing new, well-paid high end jobs in design, maintenance and construction) or go to charities designated or designed by some of the most successful people in our society. The government never makes money; it only takes money, and then spends it. The evidence that Washington, D.C. bureaucrats can spend the bucks more effectively and productively than private money-makers is non-existent—which is why major tax-rate cuts in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush administrations have all produced economic booms. The idea that higher rates for the super-rich would mean lower rates for the rest of us is naïve, to say the least. Even if governmental officials meant to send all the new money from tax hikes “back to the people” in the form of middle class tax cuts, they’d still need to pass those funds through the D.C. meat grinder—and big chunks of all such pass-throughs inevitably get stuck on the blades of the bureaucracy. No government program sends 100% of the funds assigned to it to the intended beneficiaries. The only guarantee when dollars make their way to Washington is that some of them—sometimes most of them – will end up staying there to pay the costs of administration and overhead. .
2) Higher rates are ineffective in producing higher revenues, and encourage both laziness and sleazy strategies of tax avoidance. Obviously, the higher the tax rates, the more the incentive to dodge taxes. In Russia, where Putin experimented with a flat rate of just 13%, the cynical tax collectors found themselves amazed by the tidal wave of new revenues from productive people who had previously avoided paying their taxes. Contrary to most liberal predictions, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 led to a vast increase in revenues, which has already resulted in cutting the deficit in half. Raising tax rates on the rich, on the other hand, gives an incentive to hide money and to practice tax avoidance to precisely that segment of the population that’s best able to escape their responsibilities – thanks to expert (and expensive) advice and financial flexibility. Higher rates also encourage people to invest their time in devising elaborate schemes to avoid taxes, rather than working hard to earn more income, produce more jobs, and create more wealth.
3) High tax rates are wrong and unfair – and only lead to the growth of government. When pollsters ask the public about the highest tax rate that seems fair, a majority of Americans suggest 20% -- or less. In other words, even many people who will never pay the highest rates recognize and acknowledge the essential injustice of confiscating more than a third of what individuals earn. At the moment, the top rate claims 35% -- down slightly from the top rate under Clinton (39.6%) but still up substantially from the low rate under Reagan (28%). By and large, we want our most talented and productive fellow citizens to work as hard as possible, because we understand that their efforts benefit the rest of us. Whether their excellence involves building companies, or directing movies, or throwing an unhittable slider, we understand that part of the reason they do what they do is to earn financial recognition and reward. We also understand that the best way to measure the size of government is to measure how much of private productivity that government consumes. If your boss takes back 90% of what you earn, then it’s not outrageous to say that you’re a slave and he’s your master. When the federal government used to impose a top tax rate of 90% that made the highest earners theoretical slaves to government – no wonder that they rebelled with all sorts of loopholes and tax dodges to escape that slavery. If the government takes 35% of your productive efforts, you’re still a slave for one third of the time or one third of the year—working hard to benefit others, not yourself. The great majority of Americans understand that a federal bureaucracy that can claim one-third of our efforts and one-third of our time (before we even start worrying about state and local obligations) has grown too large, too intrusive, too powerful to co-existence with free people and the ideals of liberty.
These arguments – the very core of conservative thinking – continue to make sense even to tens of millions of those who never expect to make their way into Pelosi’s target category of the guilty rich.
And what can we learn from the current political mess in Washington? Three quick lessons:
1- There really is a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. Forget all the whining (going back to notorious Democratic demagogue George Wallace) about “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties”, about “Republi-crats” and “Dem-icans” counting as interchangeable: within one week of Democratic takeover, the leadership of both House and Senate is talking about tax increases. In the twelve prior years of Republican rule no major leader of either GOP-controlled house of Congress talked about jacking up tax rates. If that doesn’t demonstrate the unbridgeable chasm between the two parties, nothing will.
2- Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, Republicans are unmistakably motivated by concern for the public good rather than efforts to protect their own bank accounts. Only a tiny percentage of GOP leaders, activists, volunteers, or talk show hosts would suffer by a tax increase limited to incomes above $500,000—yet Republican opposition to these increases is nearly unanimous.
Why? Because we care about our ideals and our vision for the nation (a vision of minimal government and maximal freedom) more than we care about our own bottom lines.
3- The biggest issue with the tax system should be tax simplification, not increasing or even decreasing rates. Tax debates always sound confusing to the American people because they are—the IRS Code, with its multitude of loopholes, mountainous volumes of regulations, Alternative Minimum Taxes, differential rates for capital gains and ordinary income, FICA, payroll deductions, earned income tax credits, and so forth, is vastly more complex than it needs to be. Each one of the regulations and special programs and specific obligations represents some governmental attempt to take tell people what to do and how to live, to expand the power of bureaucrats into every intimate corner of our homes and places of work. Republicans will begin to rebuild our majorities by emphasizing RADICAL, corruption-reducing tax simplification (either a Fair Tax on Consumption or a Flat Tax on Income) rather than merely reduced rates.
Unfortunately, the needed efforts at heroic reform – like Hercules himself cleaning out the stinking, wretched, filth-encrusted Augean Stables – must wait until Pelosi’s instinctive passion to raise rates has run its course and the GOP regains its majority. Meanwhile, we can only hope that in terms of fighting once again on this particular battlefield we can re-unify our dispirited troops and regain the clear voice of Reaganism. It’s a new year and a new struggle, and it may yet produce new energy and fresh hope.
It took Nancy Pelosi less than a week as Speaker of the House to begin talking seriously about tax hikes. On “Face the Nation” on CBS this weekend she raised the possibility of increasing the tax burden (by “repealing tax cuts”) for “those making over a certain amount of money, $500,000 a year.” She simultaneously promised tax cuts “for middle class families.”
The political calculation in this pitch is diabolically clever, of course. Nearly all Americans consider themselves “middle class,” no matter how much or how little they make, so her support for reduced taxes for “middle class families” sounds wonderful. Meanwhile, less than 2% of tax returns show income in excess of $500,000 a year so the Speaker is, in effect, inviting 98% of the public to improve their status at the expense of a tiny minority that’s already widely resented because of its “excessive” success.
If you’re nowhere near that $500,000 level where the Democrats say they’ll start punishing you, why should you care if Pelosi & Pals jack up the tax rates on the fortunate few who can afford to fund the rest of us?
Actually, this question’s just as pertinent for me as it for most of the people reading this column since my family (alas) falls below that half-million a year threshold. Yes, I’m lavishly blessed with my job and I’m delighted to earn a great income that provides us with all sorts of privileges, but we’ve never approached the multi-million dollar income that many listeners (thanks to well-publicized deals for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern) associate with successful radio hosts.
In any event, the fact that I might manage to escape unscathed from Pelosi’s proposed tax increases doesn’t make me any less indignant at the idea that she wants to squeeze more from the most productive wealth-creators in our society.
Herewith, three reasons that even those who’ll never earn a half-million a year should oppose these tax hikes, followed by three powerful lessons from the current political situation.
First, the reasons that Americans at every income level should fight against a tax increase on any income level:
1) Tax hikes hurt the economy. Pelosi proposes to take money out of the hands of people whose investment and entrepreneurship create jobs, and to place it into the hands of government, which creates only job-stifling bureaucracies. The idea that federal officials will do a better job spending money than the people who earned it is not only offensive, but profoundly illogical. If Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates makes a few extra million, that money won’t go into a mattress. It will either be used to start new companies or invested somewhere (driving the economy and producing new jobs), or spent on even more lavish mansions and yachts (providing new, well-paid high end jobs in design, maintenance and construction) or go to charities designated or designed by some of the most successful people in our society. The government never makes money; it only takes money, and then spends it. The evidence that Washington, D.C. bureaucrats can spend the bucks more effectively and productively than private money-makers is non-existent—which is why major tax-rate cuts in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush administrations have all produced economic booms. The idea that higher rates for the super-rich would mean lower rates for the rest of us is naïve, to say the least. Even if governmental officials meant to send all the new money from tax hikes “back to the people” in the form of middle class tax cuts, they’d still need to pass those funds through the D.C. meat grinder—and big chunks of all such pass-throughs inevitably get stuck on the blades of the bureaucracy. No government program sends 100% of the funds assigned to it to the intended beneficiaries. The only guarantee when dollars make their way to Washington is that some of them—sometimes most of them – will end up staying there to pay the costs of administration and overhead. .
2) Higher rates are ineffective in producing higher revenues, and encourage both laziness and sleazy strategies of tax avoidance. Obviously, the higher the tax rates, the more the incentive to dodge taxes. In Russia, where Putin experimented with a flat rate of just 13%, the cynical tax collectors found themselves amazed by the tidal wave of new revenues from productive people who had previously avoided paying their taxes. Contrary to most liberal predictions, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 led to a vast increase in revenues, which has already resulted in cutting the deficit in half. Raising tax rates on the rich, on the other hand, gives an incentive to hide money and to practice tax avoidance to precisely that segment of the population that’s best able to escape their responsibilities – thanks to expert (and expensive) advice and financial flexibility. Higher rates also encourage people to invest their time in devising elaborate schemes to avoid taxes, rather than working hard to earn more income, produce more jobs, and create more wealth.
3) High tax rates are wrong and unfair – and only lead to the growth of government. When pollsters ask the public about the highest tax rate that seems fair, a majority of Americans suggest 20% -- or less. In other words, even many people who will never pay the highest rates recognize and acknowledge the essential injustice of confiscating more than a third of what individuals earn. At the moment, the top rate claims 35% -- down slightly from the top rate under Clinton (39.6%) but still up substantially from the low rate under Reagan (28%). By and large, we want our most talented and productive fellow citizens to work as hard as possible, because we understand that their efforts benefit the rest of us. Whether their excellence involves building companies, or directing movies, or throwing an unhittable slider, we understand that part of the reason they do what they do is to earn financial recognition and reward. We also understand that the best way to measure the size of government is to measure how much of private productivity that government consumes. If your boss takes back 90% of what you earn, then it’s not outrageous to say that you’re a slave and he’s your master. When the federal government used to impose a top tax rate of 90% that made the highest earners theoretical slaves to government – no wonder that they rebelled with all sorts of loopholes and tax dodges to escape that slavery. If the government takes 35% of your productive efforts, you’re still a slave for one third of the time or one third of the year—working hard to benefit others, not yourself. The great majority of Americans understand that a federal bureaucracy that can claim one-third of our efforts and one-third of our time (before we even start worrying about state and local obligations) has grown too large, too intrusive, too powerful to co-existence with free people and the ideals of liberty.
These arguments – the very core of conservative thinking – continue to make sense even to tens of millions of those who never expect to make their way into Pelosi’s target category of the guilty rich.
And what can we learn from the current political mess in Washington? Three quick lessons:
1- There really is a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. Forget all the whining (going back to notorious Democratic demagogue George Wallace) about “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties”, about “Republi-crats” and “Dem-icans” counting as interchangeable: within one week of Democratic takeover, the leadership of both House and Senate is talking about tax increases. In the twelve prior years of Republican rule no major leader of either GOP-controlled house of Congress talked about jacking up tax rates. If that doesn’t demonstrate the unbridgeable chasm between the two parties, nothing will.
2- Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, Republicans are unmistakably motivated by concern for the public good rather than efforts to protect their own bank accounts. Only a tiny percentage of GOP leaders, activists, volunteers, or talk show hosts would suffer by a tax increase limited to incomes above $500,000—yet Republican opposition to these increases is nearly unanimous.
Why? Because we care about our ideals and our vision for the nation (a vision of minimal government and maximal freedom) more than we care about our own bottom lines.
3- The biggest issue with the tax system should be tax simplification, not increasing or even decreasing rates. Tax debates always sound confusing to the American people because they are—the IRS Code, with its multitude of loopholes, mountainous volumes of regulations, Alternative Minimum Taxes, differential rates for capital gains and ordinary income, FICA, payroll deductions, earned income tax credits, and so forth, is vastly more complex than it needs to be. Each one of the regulations and special programs and specific obligations represents some governmental attempt to take tell people what to do and how to live, to expand the power of bureaucrats into every intimate corner of our homes and places of work. Republicans will begin to rebuild our majorities by emphasizing RADICAL, corruption-reducing tax simplification (either a Fair Tax on Consumption or a Flat Tax on Income) rather than merely reduced rates.
Unfortunately, the needed efforts at heroic reform – like Hercules himself cleaning out the stinking, wretched, filth-encrusted Augean Stables – must wait until Pelosi’s instinctive passion to raise rates has run its course and the GOP regains its majority. Meanwhile, we can only hope that in terms of fighting once again on this particular battlefield we can re-unify our dispirited troops and regain the clear voice of Reaganism. It’s a new year and a new struggle, and it may yet produce new energy and fresh hope.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Win One for the Gipper
RealClearPolitics
Ronald A. Cass
Ronald Reagan, though derided endlessly by Democrats and media elites, won the presidency not just as a consummate showman but as the apostle of three big ideas.
First, he believed that a free enterprise system is not merely more efficient than a government-run command-and-control economy - it also is far more consistent with ideals of human freedom and dignity. Second, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand-in-hand - and are preferable to government choice and group responsibility. Third, America is a fundamentally good nation - we should be willing to stand up for it and if necessary to fight for it.
Reagan's optimism about America and devotion to freedom fueled his belief that it was necessary to defeat communism - a system that denied human freedom, denied God, suppressed free will, and sought global dominion - and that we could win if we were committed to doing that. Despite the hoots from sophisticates, Reagan proved right on all counts. His vision of "morning in America" resonated with us, and his call "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" inspired victims of abusive, totalitarian governments around the world.
Next week, Americans have the opportunity to reaffirm President Reagan's vision or to take a step back toward the vision of government and of America he fought against.
Democrats today, as in the 1970s, believe that government knows best how to handle a broad array of problems; that it should take more in taxes and spend more at home; that we're better off hoping for the best than taking the fight to our enemies; and that freedom and responsibility are subordinate values to their own vision of what society should be.
Nothing in that should be a surprise. No one who follows politics even a little could imagine that the America of Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi would look anything like Ronald Reagan's America.
Yet, shockingly, this election hangs in the balance because many conservatives don't think it's worth coming out to vote. Races across the country will turn on who goes to the polls and who stays home. Conservatives should flock to the polls to protect Reagan's legacy.
Instead, Reagan's name and memory are invoked as excuses for apathy. Some conservatives are piqued that President Bush and congressional Republicans have not been true enough to the Reagan vision, accusing them of tacking before the wind on trade and spending and campaign funding, not doing enough to put God back in our schools, succumbing to the corruption of power. Conservatives, echoing the media, moan that the war in Iraq seems endless, unpopular, and un-winnable. Conservatives speak of teaching their leaders a lesson.
This is not the time. This is not the way. Because on every issue conservatives care about, giving power to Democrats will make things worse.
Take two of the biggest issues: terrorism and Iraq. These are related issues, no matter how the media and Democrats struggle to pull them apart. America has been attacked repeatedly by Islamic terrorists intent on destroying our nation, our culture, and our people. They attacked us in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Our tepid responses only emboldened the terrorists.
When they struck in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 innocents, President Bush resolved that we would take the fight to them and to those who harbor and support them. The President and Congress have aggressively pursued terrorists, expanded our capacity to gather and protect intelligence about their operations, and put them on the defensive in dramatic reversal of our prior course.
Five years ago, every pundit assured us that we faced further, imminent attacks on the scale of 9/11's tragedy. Yet none has occurred. Rather than praising our success, Democrats routinely criticize the President and Republicans for paying too much attention to saving American lives and too little to protecting the terrorists' civil rights.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's brutal regime supported terrorists, paid them for killing Israelis, gassed its own citizens, and attacked its neighbors. Our losses in Iraq are lamentable - each and every one of them - but the deaths of brave American service men and women during 44 months of war, splashed across news headlines daily, represent fewer lives lost than the terrorists took on a single day.
Sadly, Democrats seem to fear the polls more than the terrorists. Their instincts in the war on terror and the war in Iraq mirror their instincts in the war on communism and the Vietnam War - and in each case their willingness to run away from a fight at the first sign of trouble encourages the enemy and undercuts our troops. Conservatives should be anything but apathetic over the prospect of a Democratic Congress in time of war.
The same is true for all of the other key issues. Remember Hillary's health care plan? Conservatives at the time described it as a perfect blend of government controls: the efficiency of the postal service and the compassion of the IRS. Judges and the court system? Democrats in the Senate have been implacable foes of judges committed to the textualist-constitutionalist approaches conservatives applaud. Immigration? Amnesty and bilingualism are the key ingredients.
Whatever conservatives don't like about Republican office-holders, they can expect to like Democrat replacements less. And that's wholly apart from the certainty that Democrats would use control of any part of Congress to investigate, castigate, and frustrate the Executive branch in every way imaginable for the remainder of President Bush's term.
Control of the Senate hinges on a string of close races. Conservatives in Pennsylvania should turn out for Rick Santorum - a Senator who has been a strong supporter of the President's judicial nominees and a solid conservative. Michael Steele, running in Maryland, would be a dependable and thoughtful conservative in a formerly Democrat seat. Senator George Allen of Virginia, though endlessly attacked in the local press for insensitive comments, has been a reliable conservative voice in the Senate. Conservative voters in New Jersey, Tennessee, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Michigan, and Rhode Island can make the difference between Republican Senate victories or defeats.
The House has many more seats, smaller districts, and a plethora of local issues influencing the outcomes, but here, too, conservative turnout can decide many contests. Tom Reynolds in New York, Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson in Connecticut, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs in Texas (forced to run as a write-in candidate for Tom DeLay's former seat), Peter Roskam in Illinois, Deborah Pryce in Ohio, and several dozen more candidates are in close races. Their fates will determine whether Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker of the House and whether John Conyers gets his wish to start hearings on impeaching the President.
Next Tuesday, Ronald Reagan's sun can continue to shine on America. But conservatives must be willing to make that happen. They must embrace the mantra that partial sunshine is better than rain any day of the week. It's a good time to remember Reagan's optimism, his pragmatism, and his values. And it would be enormously gratifying to win this one for the Gipper.
Ronald A. Cass
Ronald Reagan, though derided endlessly by Democrats and media elites, won the presidency not just as a consummate showman but as the apostle of three big ideas.
First, he believed that a free enterprise system is not merely more efficient than a government-run command-and-control economy - it also is far more consistent with ideals of human freedom and dignity. Second, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand-in-hand - and are preferable to government choice and group responsibility. Third, America is a fundamentally good nation - we should be willing to stand up for it and if necessary to fight for it.
Reagan's optimism about America and devotion to freedom fueled his belief that it was necessary to defeat communism - a system that denied human freedom, denied God, suppressed free will, and sought global dominion - and that we could win if we were committed to doing that. Despite the hoots from sophisticates, Reagan proved right on all counts. His vision of "morning in America" resonated with us, and his call "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" inspired victims of abusive, totalitarian governments around the world.
Next week, Americans have the opportunity to reaffirm President Reagan's vision or to take a step back toward the vision of government and of America he fought against.
Democrats today, as in the 1970s, believe that government knows best how to handle a broad array of problems; that it should take more in taxes and spend more at home; that we're better off hoping for the best than taking the fight to our enemies; and that freedom and responsibility are subordinate values to their own vision of what society should be.
Nothing in that should be a surprise. No one who follows politics even a little could imagine that the America of Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi would look anything like Ronald Reagan's America.
Yet, shockingly, this election hangs in the balance because many conservatives don't think it's worth coming out to vote. Races across the country will turn on who goes to the polls and who stays home. Conservatives should flock to the polls to protect Reagan's legacy.
Instead, Reagan's name and memory are invoked as excuses for apathy. Some conservatives are piqued that President Bush and congressional Republicans have not been true enough to the Reagan vision, accusing them of tacking before the wind on trade and spending and campaign funding, not doing enough to put God back in our schools, succumbing to the corruption of power. Conservatives, echoing the media, moan that the war in Iraq seems endless, unpopular, and un-winnable. Conservatives speak of teaching their leaders a lesson.
This is not the time. This is not the way. Because on every issue conservatives care about, giving power to Democrats will make things worse.
Take two of the biggest issues: terrorism and Iraq. These are related issues, no matter how the media and Democrats struggle to pull them apart. America has been attacked repeatedly by Islamic terrorists intent on destroying our nation, our culture, and our people. They attacked us in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Our tepid responses only emboldened the terrorists.
When they struck in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 innocents, President Bush resolved that we would take the fight to them and to those who harbor and support them. The President and Congress have aggressively pursued terrorists, expanded our capacity to gather and protect intelligence about their operations, and put them on the defensive in dramatic reversal of our prior course.
Five years ago, every pundit assured us that we faced further, imminent attacks on the scale of 9/11's tragedy. Yet none has occurred. Rather than praising our success, Democrats routinely criticize the President and Republicans for paying too much attention to saving American lives and too little to protecting the terrorists' civil rights.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's brutal regime supported terrorists, paid them for killing Israelis, gassed its own citizens, and attacked its neighbors. Our losses in Iraq are lamentable - each and every one of them - but the deaths of brave American service men and women during 44 months of war, splashed across news headlines daily, represent fewer lives lost than the terrorists took on a single day.
Sadly, Democrats seem to fear the polls more than the terrorists. Their instincts in the war on terror and the war in Iraq mirror their instincts in the war on communism and the Vietnam War - and in each case their willingness to run away from a fight at the first sign of trouble encourages the enemy and undercuts our troops. Conservatives should be anything but apathetic over the prospect of a Democratic Congress in time of war.
The same is true for all of the other key issues. Remember Hillary's health care plan? Conservatives at the time described it as a perfect blend of government controls: the efficiency of the postal service and the compassion of the IRS. Judges and the court system? Democrats in the Senate have been implacable foes of judges committed to the textualist-constitutionalist approaches conservatives applaud. Immigration? Amnesty and bilingualism are the key ingredients.
Whatever conservatives don't like about Republican office-holders, they can expect to like Democrat replacements less. And that's wholly apart from the certainty that Democrats would use control of any part of Congress to investigate, castigate, and frustrate the Executive branch in every way imaginable for the remainder of President Bush's term.
Control of the Senate hinges on a string of close races. Conservatives in Pennsylvania should turn out for Rick Santorum - a Senator who has been a strong supporter of the President's judicial nominees and a solid conservative. Michael Steele, running in Maryland, would be a dependable and thoughtful conservative in a formerly Democrat seat. Senator George Allen of Virginia, though endlessly attacked in the local press for insensitive comments, has been a reliable conservative voice in the Senate. Conservative voters in New Jersey, Tennessee, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Michigan, and Rhode Island can make the difference between Republican Senate victories or defeats.
The House has many more seats, smaller districts, and a plethora of local issues influencing the outcomes, but here, too, conservative turnout can decide many contests. Tom Reynolds in New York, Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson in Connecticut, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs in Texas (forced to run as a write-in candidate for Tom DeLay's former seat), Peter Roskam in Illinois, Deborah Pryce in Ohio, and several dozen more candidates are in close races. Their fates will determine whether Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker of the House and whether John Conyers gets his wish to start hearings on impeaching the President.
Next Tuesday, Ronald Reagan's sun can continue to shine on America. But conservatives must be willing to make that happen. They must embrace the mantra that partial sunshine is better than rain any day of the week. It's a good time to remember Reagan's optimism, his pragmatism, and his values. And it would be enormously gratifying to win this one for the Gipper.
