Call me a political proselyte if you want. Over the years, I’ve changed my political affiliation more times than Michael Jackson has changed his face: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and finally Independent.
Now, existing in this political purgatory known as “no party affiliation,” I have come to the conclusion that what our government needs is division. Our little experiment in Republican control has imploded, and now it’s time to dust ourselves off, tell ourselves that it wouldn’t have been much better had the Democrats controlled the show, and create a politically divided government this midterm election.
Even Republicans realize this is true. When George W. Bush took office in 2000, Republicans rejoiced at the prospect of controlling all three branches of government. But after six years, a never-ending war and profligate spending, many prominent Republicans are now beginning to question the actions and motives of their political leaders. They’re beginning to wonder whether their party deserves this level of all-encompassing power.
Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and current host Scarborough Country on MSNBC, wrote in the October issue of The Washington Monthly: “After six years of Republican recklessness at home and abroad, I seriously doubt Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid … could spend this country any deeper into debt than my Republican Party.”
Christopher Buckley – son of National Review founder William F. Buckley and the author of several books, including Thank You For Smoking – lamented in the same issue that Bush’s only veto was attached to legislation for stem cell research. “Who knew, in 2000, that ‘compassionate conservatism’ meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief?”
The Republicans deserve a swift, hard kick not because they are Republicans, but because they have become so complacent that they have alienated many of their supporters (including libertarians); they are making the same foolish mistakes that the Democrats made first in the 1960s and later in the 1970s. They have lost the trust of the American people. Now, having thrown their crumpled, once-vaunted ideals into the waste bin of history in favor of an odious, solipsistic ideology that expands the rights of the government while scrapping the rights of the individual, they expect dynastic rule.
And to think, Republicans used to be against communism.
It is easiest to study the divided government theory in terms of fiscal impact. William Niskanen of the CATO Institute, for example, studied the rate of real federal spending since the Eisenhower presidency and found that the percentage increase was significantly lower with divided governments. The Clinton and Eisenhower administrations fared best, .9 percent and .4 percent respectively, while the Kennedy/Johnson and Carter administrations fared worst, 4.8 percent and 3.7 percent. Government spending subsides when there are two sides, existing in an equally matched power dynamic, disagreeing on how to disperse federal lucre.
Dyed-in-the-wool Democrats hold Clinton up as a sort of modern-day Thomas Jefferson (with fewer slaves, one hopes), conveniently overlooking his policy of increasing the War on Drugs and his ability to cavalierly bomb a Sudanese factory into a body-part-strewn rubble because he thought it produced nerve gas when it actually produced medicine. Nonetheless, Clinton’s legacy rests on legislation that came at the behest of his Republican-controlled Congress: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as welfare reform.
Although controversial at the time, this much-needed reform made a demonstrable and positive impact. Today, welfare reform is near-universally extolled as good legislation, and both Republicans and Democrats take credit for its conception and follow through. You may call this an example of government bipartisanship, but I call it a testament to government division.
As this midterm election winds down, remind yourselves: The Republicans have failed. There is no shame in that. We all fail from time to time. But their failure to lead deserves retribution. Kick the bums out.
The Democrats are hardly the paragons of prescient political stewardship either and they’re terrible bores to boot (talk to a College Democrat if you want to cure your insomnia), but maybe they can temper some of the Republican Party’s more unnerving recent tendencies. In short, these political parties need each other, the way Sonny needed Cher, Hall needed Oates and the Captain needed Tennille.
We need division now more than ever before.
I guess my political beliefs aren’t like Jacko’s quickly disintegrating face after all; they’re more like Tara Reid’s breasts: Hardened, over-inflated and horribly, horribly scarred.
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Division sparks sanity
Daily Emerald
October 30, 2006
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