I love cute GOP slogans and catch phrases. Oh, we Dems have ‘em too, ie: Healthcare for everybody; don’t concern yourself with the price tag—but my favorite GOP one is from Americans for Tax Reform that has one that’s so cute, it borders on the adorable!

It’s their ‘tax pledge’.

You kind of want to go coochie-coochie-coo and tickle a baby’s chin when you read it too!

The adorable ‘no tax pledge’

http://www.atr.org/userfiles/Senate%20Pledge.pdf

I love this Grover Norquist stuff because of course, he doesn’t want to raise any taxes, nor does he want to give up any special interest deductions, credits, or corporate welfare. He’s gotten these people to pledge to protect that which deserves no protection and no one calls him or them on it!

So, what’s Republican or conservative about any of that?  Well, nothing.

These candidates are essentially signing an OK for the status quo and to allow for deep-pocketed special interests on all sides of the political spectrum to keep the goodies they’ve bought from Congress with borrowed money we’re stuck with the bill on.

There’s nothing Republican or conservative about any of that!

What Norquist has done is basically sold Papal Indulgences, prettied up to look like tax reform for the masses.  It’s a fraud, but he’s a great salesman; you gotta give him credit for that! Think about it, and read it again, and see how really dumb the pledge itself is, especially if you’re a Republican.

Grover Norquist; snake oil salesman extraordinaire!

And lately, candidates from both parties are signing this useless pledge because it seems to be the thing to do. However, since Norquist started this fraud in 1985, the federal government has about quadrupled in size, lead remarkably by Republicans who grew the government an astonishing 70% under George W Bush, with calamities like prescription drug benefits with no means testing, and disasters like No Child Left Behind.

Ummm, it seems your train has derailed GOPers.

So the federal government grew during this time, but they also cut taxes, preserved special interest loopholes, exploded corporate welfare, and borrowed our way to trillions of dollars of deficits funding 2 full blown wars—on a credit card!

What’s Republican or conservative about credit card spending?

Plus, by signing the tax pledge, you’re associating with a guy who compared taxes to the Holocaust!

Mr Bush was the first leader in all of  human history to go to war—in two separate theaters yet—and cut taxes while doing so; and the credit card spending wasn’t just on the two wars, but two disastrous gigantic domestic programs that have zero tangible value to society for their costs.

Think about if Congress had required every American, even those on SSI, Welfare, and Social Security, to pay just a $1 per paycheck War Tax; both wars would have been over in two years tops!

Both parties continued war spending and got away with it because we haven’t felt either of the wars in our pockets!

What’s funny about these  Norquist-type pledges is that nowhere in conservative or Republican traditional orthodoxies is there such a thing as no taxes or protections for special interests within the tax code.

This is solely a Norquist invention and contrivance done at the suggestion of Ronald Reagan after he raised taxes; and yes, Reagan did raise taxes, sorry to be the GOP myth buster here!

Hey Grover, come up with some bullshit we can force-feed the masses and make it sound really good too!

It’s Kabuki politics really, that such stuff actually works with some voters, especially primary voters, but it does.  

It’s not that we’re spending money; it’s on what and why we’re spending it that should be your governing principle, shouldn’t it? Those views are/were the bedrock of traditional Republican values.

Please tell me, absent that, what discernible difference there is between the two major parties today?

I ask this because President Obama and his people, along with a compliant Congress, decided to increase all the budgets of Cabinet level departments by no less than 8%; inflation last year? 3.85%, this year it’s minus, yes minus, -1.48%.

Not a single GOP federal office candidate is saying a word about that anywhere in the country!

Everyone in the humongous federal bureaucracy got a nice raise this year.  Did you get one?  Do you even have a job, or are you one of the 15 million officially without one, or the real numbers of 22+ million not fully employed?

Not a single GOP federal office candidate is saying a word about that.

You have to ask where are the 2010 GOP calls for a Line Item Veto Amendment to the US Constitution? We haven’t heard squat about that since 1998, and yes, it does require an amendment. 43 of 50 governors have it, why not the POTUS?  A really bad, watered down version was proposed this year again by Feingold and McCain—the frick and frack of good ideas who create really bad bills with those good ideas—but it won’t pass muster; we have to amend the Constitution.

No GOP House or Senate candidate seems interested this cycle.

How about the Federal Officeholder Term Limits Amendment? This would pass the states in a blow-out!  Not a word from anyone in either party in DC; care to venture a guess why?

Oh yeah, I want to do a nose count on who votes against this proposed amendment, don’t you?

12 years and out, both Houses; if term limits are good enough for the Executive Branch, they’re good enough for both House of Congress too. Without question, this requires an amendment to the Constitution.

I don’t consider either proposed amendment either conservative or liberal, Democrat, or Republican, but two very necessary components to getting a hold of this ever growing monster along the Potomac River.

The arguments against both (heard only from politicos; never once in 30 years from regular voters!) are some of the silliest, specious arguments I have heard in 30 years of politics, and all against are protecting turf and territory, special interests, and seniority.

So you GOPers wishing to jump on a populist zephyr that would actually resonate with voters and accomplish something of value—rather than signing Grover’s Silly Special Interest Protection Pledge—should be asking yourselves why these two very good amendment ideas aren’t paramount in each of your election campaign platforms for 2010.

I’m certainly going to be asking you where they are and I am going to be very responsive to candidates who make these two Amendments paramount in their campaigns because both are critically necessary now.

Both parties are addicted to spending, both parties cannot control themselves or say no to anyone whose check clears the bank; the ‘Birth Tax’ we’ve saddled every newborn with today, is nearly $40,000 in debt to the government with no end in sight…and the national debt is increasing by almost 4 billion dollars per day!

Again, no one is talking about this for the 2010 cycle; this is why we need Term Limits and the Line-Item Veto, they’re never going to do this themselves.

So, I’m not going to be responsive to a one note symphony of ‘no-taxes’ if you’re going to want to get me and other moderate/conservative Democrats to consider your candidates.

We need both Amendments enshrined in the US Constitution to have any hope of regaining control of our out-of-control federal government that both parties have turned into something the Founders wouldn’t recognize today.

And you reform minded Dems should be asking yourselves the same question; there is no credible reason to be against either proposed Amendment; none!

This is an American idea, the idea that we, not they, control our own destiny as a nation. If we know there’s a major problem, the Founders gave us the power to address it!

We are our own government folks; why don’t we act like it belongs to us, but complain about it all the time?

We are by design, ‘of the people…’…how about embracing that instead of silly, worthless slogans and tax pledges that mean nothing?

Then watch how positively voters respond!

That’s what I’d expect the national GOP to do, whether they’re smart enough to do so, remains to be seen.

Mike Zahara
10282009
www.WatchDogWag.com