Voinovich errrrs

A quote from Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich (from the The Columbusdispatch.com) about "The GOP's biggest problem":

“We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they[sic] hell they got to do with Ohio?’”

Senator, to use the line from an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, a Southern man don't need you around, anyhow.

Seriously though, it is easy to tell that Northern elitism has gotten bad when even Republican politicians have no problem with slamming the South.

If you Northerners despise the South so much, here is my message to you: Break up the Union. Frankly, those of us in the South are tired of paying for your idiotically utopian social programs. We are tired of you trying to run our lives while simultaneously taking our money to promote your welfare statist ideals. We are tired of being called "racist" at every turn, while you promote your reverse racism. We are tired of you spending money that neither of us has. We are tired of you saving Wall Street with money from Main Street. We are tired of you trying to save the world from the non-existent threat of Global Warming by adding taxes and regulation to normal and harmless human activities.

In summary, we are tired of YOU. So I beg of you, please break up this Union. And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Tom Coburn and the Republican Problem

In an opinion piece at WSJ.com, Tom Coburn nails the Republican problem:

Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

...The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

Coburn even goes on to explain why "compassionate conservatism" is neither compassionate nor conservative:

Compassionate conservatism's next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor's possessions. Spending other people's money is not compassionate.

A valid point to George Bush (as well as those who use religion to defend their socialism), who probably isn't listening any more than the rest of the Republicans.

Pork vs. Kids? Pork wins in Senate

A great story from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank:

The United States Senate yesterday was confronted with a stark choice: health care for children, or pet projects for lawmakers' home states.

The final tally?

Pet Projects 68, Kids 26.

...It was, Coburn's many opponents grumbled, a political stunt. But, as stunts go, this one was particularly revealing. The Oklahoma physician, a foe of the unhealthy cut of congressional pork known as "earmarks," proposed an amendment to a major health spending bill that said no lawmakers' pet projects would be funded until "all children in the U.S. under the age of 18 years are insured by a private or public health insurance plan."

I think most of us agree that health insurance for children, whether provided publicly or privately, should be a higher priority than legislative pork. This is why this vote is "particularly revealing".

Here is how the votes went (a "yea" vote was to table this amendment, a "nay" vote was to add the amendment to the "2008 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act"):

Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Allard (R-CO), Nay
Barrasso (R-WY), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Not Voting
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brownback (R-KS), Nay
Bunning (R-KY), Nay
Burr (R-NC), Nay
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Nay
Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
Coburn (R-OK), Nay
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Nay
Cornyn (R-TX), Nay
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Not Voting
Dole (R-NC), Nay
Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Nay
Enzi (R-WY), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Nay
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Not Voting
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lott (R-MS), Nay
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Nay
McCain (R-AZ), Not Voting
McCaskill (D-MO), Nay
McConnell (R-KY), Nay
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Not Voting
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Nay
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Smith (R-OR), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Sununu (R-NH), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Nay
Vitter (R-LA), Nay
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Yea

Clearly, anyone who voted "yea" on this should be held up for public scorn, but what about the "not voting" senators? Most of them are presidential candidates. Did they skip the vote for campaign reasons, or to NOT provide their opponents with political ammunition?

Here comes Fred!

You would have to be hiding under a rock today to not realize that former Senator Fred Thompson is running for president.

What can we expect from Fred? A conservative in the Reagan mold, without the Newt Gingrich baggage.

Here are some snippets from a speech Fred gave on May 4th:

Some want us, to the extent possible, to withdraw from the world that presents us with so many problems, in the hope they will go away. Some would push us towards protectionist trade policies. Others see a solution in raising taxes and redistributing the income among our citizens.

Wrong on all counts. These are defensive, defeatist policies that have consistently been proven wrong. They are not what America is all about.

Let's talk about the issues here at home, first. A lot of folks in Washington suffer from a big misconception about our economy. They confuse the well-being of our government with the wealth of our nation. Adam Smith pointed out the same problem in his day, when many governments mixed up how much money the king had with how well-off the country was.

Taxes are necessary. But they don't make the country any better off. At best they simply move money from the private sector to the government. But taxes are also a burden on production, because they discourage people from working, saving, investing, and taking risks.

That is the key thing liberals always miss when discussing taxes (which is why I put it in bold). People take financial risks for one reason: they have nothing to lose, whether they have been backed into a financial corner, or they have more money than they will ever need. Either way, taxes take away the ability of either of these people to take risks. If not for the risk takers, you wouldn't be reading this right now. Government funding didn't put personal computers in everyone's home. While government funding may have started the Internet, it was private funding that made it take off.

That's why the economy booms when taxes are cut. When the Kennedy tax cuts were passed in the 1960s, the economy boomed. When Reagan cut taxes in 1981, we went from economic malaise to a new morning in America. And when George Bush cut taxes in 2001, he took a declining economy he inherited to an economic expansion -- despite 9-11, the NASDAQ bubble and corporate scandals.

The Democrats, of course, want to raise taxes. They only want to target the rich, they say. A word of advice to anyone in the middle class -- don't stand anywhere near that target.

I see Fred knows his history. That was how the 16th Amendment got passed.

But for those of you who see taxation as a necessary evil which is needed for the government to solve whatever ails society, Fred has this to say:

The growth of government is not solving these problems; it's causing a lot of them. Every level of new bureaucracy that is created develops a level of bureaucracy beneath it, which creates another one. Pretty soon there is no accountability in the system. A new head of a department or agency comes in from out of town and, after a protracted confirmation fight, wants to spend his or her few years in Washington making great policy and solving national problems, not fighting with their own bureaucrats. So they just let well enough alone. Then you start seeing the results. Departments that can't pass an audit, computer systems that don't work, intelligence breakdowns, people in over their heads.

Yet people in both parties continue to try to federalize and regulate at the national level more and more aspects of American society -- things that have traditionally been handled at the state and local level. We must remember that we have states to serve as policy laboratories for innovation and competition. That's how we got welfare reform. Our system also allows for the diversity of our large country. Our attitude should be, let the federal government do what it is supposed to be doing -- competently. Then maybe we will give it something else to do.

On illegal immigration:

The government could start by securing our nation's borders. A sovereign nation that can't do that is not a sovereign nation. This is secondarily an immigration issue. It's primarily a national security issue. We were told twenty years ago if we produced a comprehensive solution, we'd solve the illegal immigration problem. Twelve million illegals later, we're being told that same thing again. I don't believe most Americans are as concerned about the 12 million that are here as they are about the next 12 million and the next 12 million after that. I think they're thinking: "Prove you can secure the border and then people of good will can sit down and work out the rest of it, while protecting those folks who play by the rules."

On term limits and Social Security/Medicare:

Sometimes I think that I'm the last guy around who still thinks term limits is a good idea. The professionalization of politics saps people's courage. Their desire to keep their job and not upset anybody overrides all else -- even if it hurts the country.

So the [Social Security/Medicare funding] problem gets kicked a little further down the road. This action is based on the premise that our generation is too greedy to help the next generation. I believe just the opposite is true. If grandmom and granddad think that a little sacrifice will help their grandchildren when they get married, try to buy a home or have children, they will respond to a credible call to make that sacrifice -- if they don't think that the sacrifice is going down some government black hole.

I am going to quote my friend, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. I don't think he'll mind, even though it was a private conversation. He said, "People talk a lot about moral issues, but the greatest moral issue facing our generation is the fact that we are bankrupting the next generation. People talk about wanting to make a difference. Here we could make a difference for generations to come."

Of course, anyone who quotes Tom Coburn is ok by me.