The GOP's Shallow Fight

After eight years of Bush, it seems that Chuck Baldwin was right. The “conservatives” are getting their fight back. This is in reference to Baldwin’s article back in 2008 speculating that a Democratic victory might just be good for the “conservative” movement as it would get them out of their chairs and cause them to express an iota of passion regarding politics.

Though it would see that during the eight years of Bush the only movement among the visible GOP was leftward.

Here in August of 2009, though, a renewed vigor can be seen, a fight against Socialism and this new Chairman, er…President. The fuse? Healthcare Reform.

With this, all of the nation’s problems are being heaped upon the Democrats whether they caused it or not. Among the Republican voters that I have spoken with, they seem united to put all the blame on the Democrats for the housing mess. It is a fact that there were calls to more closely monitor Fannie and Freddie by key GOP members while Franks and Dodd consistently said there were no problems with Fannie and Freddie.

Also a fact is that it was under the Clinton administration that the housing initiative began, Clinton himself signing it into law in 1999, which sought to increase home ownership to lower income folks.

These facts cannot be disputed, but the GOP is not immune to such scrutiny in the housing sector either. It was in one of Bush’s addresses to the nation that he declared that it was in his administration that more people "own their own homes than ever before" (never mind the fact that very few people owned their own homes).

Central planning under Bush, though, is as much a culprit as the liberal housing bill. The easy money philosophy of Greenspan and Bernanke had as much or more to do with the bubble that formed.

Now that Bush is out of office, though, the GOP is on the warpath to fight the wickedness that they refused to or else could not recognize in the prior administration. The code word is Socialism.

Healthcare reform was picked as the fighting line back in the primaries when so much was said by Obama and his colleague H. Clinton on the subject. Why though? Is the socialism of healthcare so much different than the socialism of No Child Left Behind?

Or why has the conservative base not attacked Medicare, Social Security or unemployment and disability taxes? Or how about public education in general?

The conservative movement has no teeth because it is always only a few years behind the left. It has no credence because it argues against Socialism while fully supporting it in other areas.

A serious discourse among GOP supporters needs to take place in order to resolve these issues. Why is socialized medicine unnecessary and evil, but public education, Social Security, Medicare, farm subsidies, FICA, unemployment, etc. are necessary and righteous?

All of these examples entail taxing (read stealing from) individuals in order to redistribute to other sectors or more evenly among the sectors from whence it was confiscated.

In short, it would seem based on the evidence, that the GOP is fighting this not because they are against socialism, but because they are against the Democrats. The same could be said of the Democratic supporters in regards to the Republican administration’s bailout of the financial sector and AIG.

The GOP, known in times past for its Christian values, should heed the wise words, “Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)