Email of the Day, Part Two

As noted in the preceding posting, the GOP message has been hyper-distilled down to "standing for tax cuts." This problem is that this isn't even true anymore, given the Neo-Conservative tendancy toward paying for their form of social engineering by slashing and burning all of the programs created and supported by their Democrat rivals for the past thirty years.

That's not tax relief, it's just a re-distribution of public wealth to support a different cause.

Moderate Republicans need to re-define not only their own, pragmatic approach to taxing and spending money but the approaches of both right and left sides of the spectrum as well. The left has been labeled "tax and spend liberals" for years by the right - and with great effect. The right, however, should be labeled what they are: "tax and spend conservatives." We've got to divorce the notion of fiscal conservative from social conservative.

The Moderate Republican point of view should be based on a simple, consumer concept: value. We should support politicians who see a need for constant reform of how we tax and where we spend in order to make sure we're getting the best value (in terms of goods and services) for our money. This allows us to take the most appealing aspect of fiscal conservatism (e.g. "who, in their right mind would pay $700 for a hammer?") and marry it to a position of reform and creativity.

And we better be creative in our approach. Without creativity we'll get stuck in the same debate as the rest of the political spectrum and that will doom our Moderate message to failure. Our ideas and positions have to be bold, imaginitive and engaging to succeed.

Kicking them around on blogs such as this is a great way to test them out and identify the best ones for further discussion and exploration.


I couldn't agree more. Cutting taxes is not what makes a Republican: wise use of the resources (ie:money) government recieves from the people is. Just because a Republican votes for a tax increase doesn't put them in same boat with liberals who seem to want to tax for no other reason than to tax. I don't want to go back to the days when the upper income tax rate was at 90 percent, but I also don't want to have horrible roads or inadaquate police protection either. All of that costs. A fiscal conservative will cut spending as much as possible, but doing that alone doesn't always cover a debt. Raising taxes when necessary as well as cutting them when needed is a wise approach. Mindlessly raising or cutting taxes for no other reason than ideology is silly and an unwise use of resources.

One of the note. If anyone who raises a tax is not a Republican, then you would have to disqualify Ronald Reagan, who did raise taxes during his presidency.