Weren't GOPers all about states' rights? about the govt. not getting involved in personal matters? what happened and what caused the shift? Conservatives - stand up.





http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/216616_firstperson21.html

Monday, March 21, 2005

What happened to real Republicans?

L.A. HEBERLEIN
GUEST COLUMNIST

I was a Teenage Republican. Working my precinct for Barry Goldwater, I got a thorough education in what real Republicans believe. And whether I still agree with all I learned then, I will always understand and respect it. I'm just not sure the people calling themselves Republicans today do.

When I was a Teenage Republican, all Republicans knew the 10th Amendment by heart and Republicans resisted the increasing power of the central government. Now Republicans leap over one another to make the federal government ever more powerful. It is Republicans at the federal level who now want to tell states whether they can allow medical marijuana or assisted suicide, or even who can have a driver's license. They want to tell the states who can get married. Imagine a Republican of my youth thinking the federal government should dictate policy to local school boards.

When I was a boy, Republicans cherished personal liberty. Creating secret no-fly lists and spy-on-your-neighbor programs, turning medical records over to police, holding people without trial in hidden military compounds, saying it's legal to torture them -- that's how we thought only Communists would behave.

Above all, the Republicans back in those days were the party of responsibility. They understood a balance sheet. "Yes," they would say, like a patient father with an immature child, "we'd all love that, but we can't afford it. Look right here at the numbers." Fiscal discipline was a value held almost as deeply as family and religion. Republicans knew that nothing works if you can't pay for it, that only ruin and shame can come from laying out more than you take in.

Where have all those Republicans gone? The ones running Washington, D.C., today inherited a $236 billion budget surplus, and like kids on crack with a credit card, turned it into a trillion-dollar deficit almost overnight.

If there was one thing the Republicans of my youth understood the value of, it was the American dollar. Today's Republicans stand around and watch the American dollar fall further every day. With our out-of-control trade deficits and increasingly shaky credit, all it might take is for one central banker from one small country to switch reserves to the Euro, and the dollar could plummet like the Space Shuttle Columbia, leaving a smoking trail of ugly wreckage.

When the issue of long-term planning for the future of Social Security came up, I thought maybe the Republicans I remember had resurfaced. That is exactly the sort of issue a white-haired Republican accountant for the water district would have raised in my youth. "Now, in 40 years," he would patiently explain, "the way these bonds are structured, we're going to have a shortfall, unless we adopt prudent measures right now." So the board would adopt prudent measures. After all, they were responsible people.

But have you followed the Social Security story? Do you know the plan?

The way Social Security works is that the people paying in support the people taking out. The "Republicans" in Washington want to let people stop paying in, so they can put their money in private investment accounts. But if we let people stop paying in, where's the money for people who are drawing out now?

Listen, you'll never believe this. The plan is to borrow it -- to borrow a trillion more dollars.

Oh, for a time machine. Mr. Twenty-First-Century-Call-Yourself-Republican, can I get you to come back with me to explain to a real Republican how, with our nation in debt as never before, your plan to fix Social Security is to borrow a trillion more dollars?





Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Letters to the Editor

SCHIAVO CASE


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Bush has double standard on culture of life
How ironic it is that our beloved president says that he supports a culture of life. He wants to outlaw abortions and signed into law a bill that would make it illegal to remove the feeding tube from a person who has been in a constantly vegetative state for 15 years and has virtually no chance of improvement.

And yet this is the same man who, as governor of Texas, signed more death warrants for those on death row than at any other time in history. That doesn't sound like he is very supportive of a culture of life to me. If W were truly supportive of a culture of life, he would pass a law that would make the death penalty illegal in the United States.

Chris Howard
Marysville


Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Letters to the Editor

SCHIAVO CASE


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Bush has double standard on culture of life
How ironic it is that our beloved president says that he supports a culture of life. He wants to outlaw abortions and signed into law a bill that would make it illegal to remove the feeding tube from a person who has been in a constantly vegetative state for 15 years and has virtually no chance of improvement.

And yet this is the same man who, as governor of Texas, signed more death warrants for those on death row than at any other time in history. That doesn't sound like he is very supportive of a culture of life to me. If W were truly supportive of a culture of life, he would pass a law that would make the death penalty illegal in the United States.

Chris Howard
Marysville


Other victims more deserving of attention
The White House and Republicans in Congress pushed restrictions on class action cases, to prevent "judge shopping" by lawyers for clients -- such as asbestos victims fighting for breath -- who need and deserve real relief.

But Republican leaders have been quite willing to twist the entire lawmaking process -- including a rare call-back from a congressional recess and flying the president of the United States back into town, law-signing pen ready, 24/7 -- in order to judge-shop Terri Schiavo's single case into federal court when they didn't like the rulings of a judge in state court.

Gosh, wouldn't we all like such special attention from the president and Congress of the United States! What about victims of asbestos or farmworker families obliged to endure the killing mist of pesticides?

Are these "leaders" really concerned about our constitutional right to life and health, or simply pandering to a right-wing base in an appalling display of party politics?

Craig Salins
Seattle


Conservatives used to champion states' rights
One of the most basic cornerstones of conservative political philosophy is -- or at least used to be -- the protection of states' rights. What a strange group of conservatives we have now days; they are more than willing to sacrifice states' rights at the altar of the Christian conservatives.

Don't like a state's views on medical marijuana? Seek federal intervention!

Don't like a state allowing gay marriage? Seek a federal constitutional amendment!

Don't like the outcome of a state's right to die law? No problem -- the Christian right is happy to attempt to provide you with an end run through a congressionally authorized trip to the federal courts.

I remember when conservatives were, you know, conservative. Who would have thought that we would ever see the day when, in order to get the government off the backs of the people, we would have to vote for the liberals.

"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy ... To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism ... ." Barry Goldwater (1972).

Bill Tanner
Poulsbo

L.A. Heberlein lives in Seattle.

-AO
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