September Update from the Bartow County Republican Party

This has been a fascinating political season so far. No one could have predicted what we are seeing today. Less than two years ago, the Republican Party was being written off, predictions of 40 years of Democrat rule was common, and the death of conservatism was being proclaimed and celebrated by the political Left. My, my, what a difference 19 months makes.

The Democrats have used their massive majorities in both houses to shove an ultra-liberal agenda down the throats of the American people, and the people are not happy about it. This disdain for the will of the people has led to an uprising against the Democrats, who expected their agenda to be hailed and praised with unending gratitude. Instead, it led to angry town hall meetings, wins for Republicans in liberal strongholds, and the rise of the TEA Party movement.

Even some of the Republican establishment has been taken off gaurd by the rise of the TEA Party movement and the primary wins for the candidates it has backed. I think that is a great thing. We now have outstanding and outspoken conservatives running in the general election. Conservatives like Marco Rubio and Jim Miller and Alan West. Many Republican leaders may not want to hear it, but Republicans got killed in 2006 and 2008 because they abandoned conservative principles, not because they embraced them. I think the new blood is welcome, and it will be great to expand the ranks of those calling for, and insisting on, limited government, lower taxes and a return to the Constitution.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the conservative message is a positive message. It is one that proclaims a belief in the fundamental goodness and potential of man. It is one that proclaims that man should be free to pursue his own goals without interference from government, provided it does not infringe on the rights of others. It is one that allows a man or a woman to sacrifice their blood, sweat, tears and capital to develop an idea, and then reap the rewards when it succeeds, instead of villifying the successful, confiscating their earnings and calling them greedy.

In just over a month we'll have an opportunity to go to the polls and express our will. The media and the Left portray us as heartless, greedy, racist, bigoted, environment-killing, oppressive, hate-filled people, but nothing could be further from the truth. We love our fellow man, we love our country, and we love our God. We just want to be left alone to pursue our dreams, whether we succeed or fail. So for the next month we need to be talking to friends, family and neighbors and spreading that message. Ours is a message of hope rooted in our own divine nature, in a belief in our God and the greatness of America. It is a message that resonates powerfully. We've had to oppose this administration's efforts because they are destructive to freedom, but if we regain power we must have a positive message to share. We can still be that shining city on a hill that Reagan spoke of, if we take up the fight with resolve and with a smile on our face.

Health Care Reform

It seems like ObamaCare is not the gratitude-inducing entitlement expansion that the Democrats thought it would be. In fact, it has gotten so bad that 3/4 of the money spent by Democrats running ads including ObamaCare is spent coming out AGAINST the bill! It seems that Democrats and Obama are so disconnected from reality that they thought that the American people, after expressing their desire for it not to pass, would soon wise up and take the bitter medicine and realize how good it is for them. Well, they were wrong.

Each passing day seems to reveal a new detail about the law that makes it even worse than we thought. We've learned about the IRS Form 1099 requirement (which requires businesses, all of them, to issue a 1099 for EVERY vendor with with they do more than $600 in transactions annually...and the National Small Business Administration is estimating this will increase the number of 1099's filed for the average small business from 10 currently to 86 under the new law). We are also learning that once the accounting gimmicks are stripped away, the 10-year cost of ObamaCare is projected to be $3 trillion or more! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a report recently which revealed that the cost of implementing ObamaCare will cause costs to rise by 6.3% annually (and we know that government never underestimates the cost of a program, right?). In 2014, once all provisions of the law are enacted, costs are expected to rise by 9.2%. So much for bending the cost curve downward. Instead, ObamaCare is a launching pad for cost inflation.

This is all the more reason to make sure that Republicans, especially conservatives, are elected in November and then in 2012. There is a tremendous amount of damage that will need to be repaired.

The Economy, Taxes and Deficits

President Obama and the Democrats look more and more insane as they try to stem the coming bloodbath at the polls by bizarrely claiming the "stimulus"bill to be a success, even as "Recovery Summer" has seen unemployment stay near 10%, market uncertainty continues, we have anemic hiring numbers in the private sector and exponentially more debt. Despite the fact that there was $150 billion set aside in the first stimulus for infrastructure, President Obama is now calling for another $50 billion in spending on "Roads, Railroads and Runways".

Of course, due to a little noticed executive order shortly after he was inaugurated, virtually all government projects must use union labor or pay prevailing union wages, which significantly increases the cost. And none of this spending will be paid for with cuts anywhere else, and will therefore result in even higher deficits. It has gotten so bad that even some senior Democrats, like Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are calling on President Obama and Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts, the failure of which will lead to higher taxes on all of us.

President Obama this month gave us a brief glimmer of hope that he may finally be beginning to understand basic economics when he proposed making permanent the research and development tax credit signed by President Ronald Reagan (a man who truly understood the principles of economics) in 1981, as well as a one-year tax write-off for business-related capital expenditures. Both of these things would make an immediate impact on positive economic growth.

There is a catch though... the capital expense credit expires in one year, and the R&D credit AND the capital expenditure write-off would be paid for (in the lexicon of politicians) by closing loopholes in other areas, specifically as it relates to the oil and gas industry. In other words, raising taxes. So we are left either with zero net gain, or, due to the size of the oil industry, further economic losses.

Even more bizarre is the fact that, as we rocket faster and faster towards a fully government-controlled, centrally planned economy, after more than half a century of this model, Cuban president Fidel Castro declared that Cuba's communist model has failed, and is turning towards the free market to try to reduce the squalor and non-productivity of his own little communist hellhole. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic magazine, Castro said that the "Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

So...Cuba tries free enterprise, Canada and Britain exppand privatization of their health care systems, Germany cuts taxes and sees strong economic growth...and Obama and the Democrats are dead set on implementing the government/economic model that everyone else is abandoning likes rats off a sinking ship. Makes perfect sense.