Why should we trust them again?

House minority leader John Boeher was on Michael Medved's show today. In response to a caller's question, Boeher said that the the GOP did indeed have a health care proposal. He gave the URL where it was posted.

REALLY??? I'll bet that most people have no idea that the GOP has a health care plan. Of course Boehner didn't articulate AT ALL what was actually in the plan.

Reagan and Gingrich understood something that Boehner doesn't -- being shy and keeping things quiet is NOT how one wins in the marketplace of ideas.

The sad fact is that the current GOP members in Congress lack the kind of great leadership and communication skills that they had in the 1990s under Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Bill Archer. Not only did those guys accomplish a lot (welfare reform, capital gains tax cut, balanced budget, etc), they also set the stage for what would happen when the GOP took control of the Presidency. I remember the big debates between Armey and Archer on how they would scrap the current tax code in favor of either a flat rate income tax or a national sales tax. Even "moderates" like Pete Domenici (R) and Sam Nunn (D) came up with their own version of radical tax reform (a “consumption-oriented” income tax).

ALL reform (let alone talk of even more radical reform) died in January 2001 when George Bush became President. Instead, George Bush and Karl Rove tried to emulate the Democrats by buying votes with the first new entitlement program since LBJ and the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history. It didn't work and they got booted out of office. Boehner was part of the mess that Bush made.

The result was inevitable -- the Democrats now control the federal government and are doing everything possible to make it even larger.

I am so VERY happy that Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. It signals that virtually everyone except the most brain dead socialist is waking up to reality. However, this doesn't mean that we should automatically trust John Boehner and the Bush GOP sell-outs again. We need to take it candidate-by-candidate and really take a hard look at whether or not they going to return power to the people or continue to consolidate government in the hands of a few elitists.

How much worse can Obama really be?

Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times yesterday that “Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion”.

What has really threatened every libertarian value Barr professes is 8 years of George Bush and 6 years of his lackey GOP Congress who have rejected everything that Ronald Reagan stood for.

They put mechanisms in place like the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act that are destroying our civil liberties and will continue to do irreparable harm to Americans long after Bush is gone.

They did something that Ronald Reagan vowed America would never do -- start an aggressive war against a country that could not have possibly threatened us.

Their aggressive war brought us $4.00 a gallon gasoline.

They went on a drunken orgy of spending that doubled the national debt.

Their deficit spending and overly cheap credit have destroyed the dollar and the housing market.

It’s gotten to the point where many Republicans don’t even pretend to believe in limited government any longer. Now we hear about “big government conservatism”, “compassionate conservatism”, or “national greatness conservatism”. All of these labels are nothing more than euphemisms for “socialism”.

One thing has become very clear during the last 8 years -- Bush was worse than Bill Clinton on a lot of issues, especially those around fiscal responsibility. We don't need two Democratic parties. Yes Obama may be worse than both Bush and Clinton, but with the GOP back in opposition maybe they will learn how to oppose big government once again.