The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Stop Going After Easy Targets

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Stop Going After Easy Targets

By W. James Antle, III on 1.28.09 @ 11:22AM

The political savvy Phil notes below is also a direct result of the Republicans' too clevery by four-fifths strategy of focusing their spending critique on earmarks and pork. Almost all of John McCain's credibility as an anti-spending politician, for example, came from his stand against earmarks. Earmarks are annoying, but they are not the spending that is bankrupting our entitlements programs or pushing us toward a European-style welfare state.

Republicans are right to point to the wasteful spending in the stimulus package and to highlight the extent to which this is just a giveway to various Democratic constituencies. But by focusing only on the waste, they give the Democrats the easy out of stripping the most egregious projects from the bill. The stimulus package needs to be opposed because it is bad economics; because the country cannot afford it; because the real stimulus portions are tiny; because the big increases in the deficit happen in the future, not now. In short, Republicans need to stop playing around and become a party of fiscal reality again.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Stan Redmond| 1.28.09 @ 12:09PM

I still feel dirty casting my vote for McCain. If it wasn't for Palin it would have gone for Barr. It speaks volumes about just how bad Obama's big gov't socialism is compaired to McCain when McCain only got more votes because he was slightly less left then Obama. I need a drink and a shower.

WJO| 1.28.09 @ 12:10PM

Why not call it by its proper name?
The Social Engineer Play Money Act of 2009.

Martin| 1.28.09 @ 12:29PM

GWB with the 2005 Republican Congress would have proposed something very similar, with only the political details altered -- huge slush funds for "faith based initiatives" and less for unions. It is an ENORMOUS relief to be rid of him, so one can support good economics and hope that one's side might occasionally do so too.

WJO| 1.28.09 @ 12:33PM

Martin:

Site three "good economics" things in this lard factory of a bill.

Martin| 1.28.09 @ 1:45PM

That's the point, there aren't any. But if Bush/Paulson or Bush/DeLay had come up with anything similar, as they almost certainly would have, one would have had little support in denouncing it.

JP| 1.28.09 @ 1:57PM

Note to Martin,
Bush is no longer President. Many of House members of 2005 GOP Caucus are also gone - a few are even in jail. Try to concentrate on the present. BTW, there are a few people who write for AS , and many more at other institutions that have warned for years about the out of control spending, as well as the "Private-Public Partnership" between business and goverment (ie Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac). I'm not sure what your point is. Why don't you just come out and say it.

Martin| 1.28.09 @ 2:33PM

I am rejoicing that we can now come out and oppose government spending without finding ourselves undermined by a President we foolishly voted for. By 2016 (our next real shot) we might have a GOP that actually stands for something, which we haven't had since '98 or at the Presidential level '88.

Sean| 1.28.09 @ 3:20PM

It is nice to see some GOP members come out for some sort of fiscal responsibility. It would have been even better if they had done that while they were in power.