Election 2006 Reality Check

The case for continuing the GOP majority

By Cal Thomas

Source: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas101006.php3

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Republicans have a fair story to tell about what they've accomplished over the last two years, but their narrative has been interrupted by the trashy subplot of Mark Foley and his trolling for male House pages.


Democrats are constantly changing their narrative when it fails to match reality. The reason Democrats don't talk about the deficit like they used to is because it has dropped from the $423 billion predicted by President Bush, as recently as last February, to $250 billion, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO says the reason for the decline is better than expected tax receipts, especially from corporate profits. There are more tax receipts because individuals and corporations are being taxed at lower rates, giving them increased incentive to earn bigger profits. Bigger profits produce more tax revenue.


Gasoline prices are down sharply from just a few months ago; the Dow Jones Industrials set a new record high last week. The unemployment rate now stands at 4.6 percent — down from 6.3 percent in 2003, lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s, or the 1990s, and equivalent to the unemployment rate in September 1998. Since August 2003, the economy has created 6.6 million new jobs.


What Republicans did not do is conduct a crusade against new spending, as well as waste, fraud and abuse. Instead, too many of them joined the Democrats at the spending trough, setting earmark records. If Democrats win a congressional majority in next month's election, they would increase spending and raise taxes. This would slow and possibly halt the economic expansion.


The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act is a fine accomplishment. It will create an earmark database that the public can easily access on the Internet. The bill passed largely because of the bipartisan leadership of senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-Ill).


The problem for Republicans is that they seem to have run out of ideas. They now ask for votes on two levels, neither of which is appealing. The first is that the Democrats would do a worse job than Republicans, which is like choosing which of two ugly sisters to take on a date. The second is they crave power for its own sake. Republicans have failed to give voters sufficient reason to vote for them, except for one that trumps all the rest — they can better defend the country.


Democrats have no plan for keeping America safe, or winning the war against the fanatics. They have opposed most of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance methods. They have opposed aggressive interrogation tactics designed to get information to protect us, including opposition to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where detainees are treated better than they could expect if they were detained in their homelands.


This election isn't about House pages; it's about survival. In his new book, "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It," JWR columnist Mark Steyn states this irrefutable fact about the importance of winning in Iraq: "Being seen not to run — or, if you prefer, being seen to show 'resolve' — should be the indispensable objective of U.S. foreign policy. Were these colors to run from Iraq, it would be the end of the American era — for why would Russia, China, or even Belgium ever again take seriously a superpower that runs screaming for home at the first pinprick."


For all of their promises to do a better job of fighting this war, Democrats have no plan, other than retreat. That is the plan the terrorists have for us. Retreat is not in their playbook. The terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere don't speak of timetables for withdrawal or bringing their fighters home in time for Ramadan. They're in it for the long haul. They believe we are not. A victory by Democrats next month will validate their view and encourage them to fight harder.


Republicans have been far from perfect in this war. They have barely approached mediocrity in their handling of domestic issues. But to change horses and leaders mid-war is a prescription for a longer engagement, because this is a confrontation that will end only in victory or defeat for one side or the other. That's why the Republicans need to keep their majority and conservatives need to keep the pressure on them to get back to the original GOP principles that brought them that majority. That's a better strategy than Republicans acting like Democrat-lite.


Don't fall for the propaganda

By David Limbaugh

Source: http://jewishworldreview.com/david/limbaugh101006.php3

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I don't care how many times I hear it, I refuse to believe that significant numbers of conservatives will stay home in November and thereby assist the Democratic Party to regain control of Congress.


Democrats and the Old Media have been working hard to create this perception for several months, citing poll after poll to support their claims. It reminds me of the exit poll manipulation orchestrated by the Old Media and Democrat operatives in 2004 to create the GOP-deflating perception that John Kerry was winning big.


But with the unveiling of the Foley scandal, there is an even bigger spring to their step — kind of like their perverse, gleeful reaction to problems with the delayed federal response to Hurricane Katrina.


Before Foley I gave conservatives more credit than to believe they would sit this election out over their disillusionment with Republicans concerning immigration and domestic spending. My confidence remains after Foley as well, despite push polling and other techniques designed to discourage conservative turnout.


Conservatives are generally rational creatures and sophisticated enough to understand that the national interest will not be served by turning national security over to a party wholly incapable of safeguarding it for the sake of punishing Republicans.


To the argument of some conservatives that losing the election will result in the nation eventually returning to its conservative roots, I say "nonsense." We can't afford the luxury, during time of war and incalculable threats to our national security, our culture, our freedom and our sovereignty, of taking our ball and going home for a few critical years.


I do not believe conservatives will deliver control to the party of tax and spend because Republicans haven't done enough to curb domestic spending. My assessment is reinforced by news that the Bush tax cuts have unleashed a robust economy and explosive federal revenues that have reduced the deficit to 2 percent of GDP, lower than the 2.7 percent average of the last 40 years.


I don't believe conservatives will conspire to assign control over immigration to the wide-open border Democrats, notwithstanding the Republicans' tardy and so-far inadequate response to the immigration problem. My assessment is reinforced by news that Congress passed a measure to erect a 700-mile border fence. Conservative angst forced recalcitrant politicians to act. This is how you get results — not by replacing a highly imperfect party with an incomparably egregious one.


And I especially don't believe social conservatives, because of their disappointment with Republicans over Foley, will turn to a militantly secular Democratic leadership to protect Washington pages from sexual predators. My assessment is reinforced by the immediate resignation of Foley and the Republican leadership's initiation of comprehensive investigations into the matter, promising full accountability for culpable Republicans.


My optimism that conservatives will not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good and stay home in November is further enhanced by Democrats recently overplaying their hand on the Foley scandal.


Though they boasted for the longest time that they could trounce Republicans in November by a substantive debate on the issues, they've been studiously avoiding such a debate and resorting only to attacking Bush and scandalmongering. But now that they think the Foley affair is tainting the entire Republican Party, Nancy Pelosi has gotten cocky enough to unveil her agenda for the first 100 hours of her speakership.


She better hope that she hasn't triggered a true national debate on the issues and unwittingly nationalized the congressional elections, something the Republicans hadn't managed to pull off.


Can you imagine the Democrats winning a debate over national security when they've vigorously opposed almost every tool President Bush has tried to use to prosecute the war on terror? How would they gain from a true debate over Iraq, when Democrats still don't have a plan and can't even decide whether they favor withdrawal, "timetables" or "benchmarks"?


Can you imagine Democrats prevailing on a values debate where it would be emphasized that they actively promote the radical homosexual agenda and castigate one of the finest institutional exemplars of traditional values in our nation's history — the Boy Scouts — for their moral refusal to permit homosexuals to be scoutmasters? Does Nancy Pelosi truly support the National American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) or just proudly march in parades with them and receive 90 percent approval from their ACLU enablers? Inquiring minds surely want to know.


It is time for conservatives to ignore the Democrat and Old Media propaganda and vote in even greater numbers in November. If Democrats and the Old Media keep reporting that conservatives are going to stay home, they might be in store for the upset of their lives on Election Day — just maybe.