The Ghosts of the Republican Party Past

Mitt, the rising star, catches Thatcher vote

What's the next best thing to getting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan himself? Getting an endorsement from Margaret Thatcher, of course. Alas, the headline of this article is a bit presumptuous at this point -- as indicated by this line: "If not quite an official anointing, the handshake and chat with so venerable a figure was an unmistakable sign to conservatives that he was “one of us” -- but it's still good news. It makes me wonder how much, if at all, Thatcher has ever gotten involved in American electoral politics.


Insta-Defeat?

In the second paragraph of his post Andrew Sullivan describes my own frustrations with the Republican Party fairly accurately.

People also vote Republican because they want representatives able to say no to government spending. The current Bush GOP says: YES, MORE PLEASE. The two most significant facts about the current crew in power is that they have increased the debt overhang facing the next generation from $20 trillion to $43 trillion in five years. The new Medicare entitlement was putting fiscal gasoline on a raging fire of debt. No one who voted for it can even be faintly described as conservative. Then there's simple pork and corruption. The last transportation bill had over 6,000 earmarks in it. Reagan vetoed a bill because it had 150 earmarks in it. That was when the GOP was conservative. What Bush-DeLay-Hastert-Frist are about is not fiscal conservatism in any recognizable form. They are about borrowing vast amounts of money from Asian banks, spending more liberally than any Democratic Congress since FDR, and using it to bribe voters in gerry-mandered districts to keep themselves in power.

He also writes what he believes will be the theme of this November's election: "To paraphrase Mr Carville, it's losing the war, stupid."