The Democrat National Committee is attacking the Republican governor of South Carolina. Mark Sanford has said for weeks that he would not accept federal stimulus money for his state. he wants to use a quarter of that money to pay down the state's debt. He says that the stimulus would actually make the financial situation in the state worse in the long term.

However, being financially responsible and paying off an already existing debt doesn't sit well with them. Some Republicans have learned from the mistakes of the party's past. The Dems apparently didn't.

SOURCE: CNN article

Since the 2006 midterm election we have heard things from the Left like, "elections have consequences" and "don't preach about fiscal responsibility when Bush grew the debt greater than any president since FDR". And they're right on both counts.

The fact is that the Republicans screwed up royally. They were more concerned about maintaining a semblance of power so that they betrayed the fiscal responsibility that got them elected in the first place. And I still say to this day that the Democrats didn't win the 2006 and 2008 elections; the Republicans lost. In fact, you could say that they went out of their way to lose.

But this is a new year. The new congress and the president have been in control for a little over a month and things are worse now than they were before. The stock market continues to decline because investors are worried about the socialist moves that the new government has begun to put in place. And the only answer that the Democrats offer is more government spending, more regulation and higher taxes on the high achievers--the ones that provide most of the jobs in this country. The thing that the Republicans warned against has come to pass. So now what do we do?

The only thing to do is reelect the Republicans in 2010. They aren't perfect but hopefully they have been sufficiently chastised that they will not make the same mistakes again. We should redouble our efforts to show that the Democrat plans are not only counterproductive, but are in fact harmful. We should take the high road and not issue juvenile personal attacks. We should modernize, not hip hop-ize the party. We should use the same techniques (i.e. internet video, blogging, email campaigns, etc.) as the Dems, without stooping to the same type of  false accusations and mindless repetition of talking points. We have the facts on our side. It's time that we use modern campaigning techniques and technologies to get our message out.

And once we are back in control we need to put the party's feet to the fire to make sure that they don't make the mistakes of the past or come up with new mistakes that they can make. This is too important.

We also need a special 10th amendment commission to explore ways to return power to the states. The size and power of the federal government are truly unconstitutional. We must challenge the big government types on this. They claim that they are supporting and defending the Constitution but they do the exact opposite of what they say.

Winning in 2010 is going to be harder because the Left has decided to politicize the census by putting it under the control of the White House. They are also bantering about the atrociously name "Fairness Doctrine". And some of the higher taxes on the job providers that I mentioned earlier won't go into effect until 2011. That means that even if we win in 2010, by the time we take control of the congress these oppressive taxes will start to ruin the economy even further.

Personally I would like to see a more libertarian form of government. But truthfully the Libertarian Party doesn't stand much chance of winning a national election campaign. There are still too many people in this county that want a nanny government to take care of them, than want liberty. The Republicans aren't the perfect choice but they are still the best option that we have. The more we can move the party toward constructivist, libertarian policies the better the county will be for it.

I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night. That means one down, three to go. The thing about the SOU is that you really know what the president is going to say beforehand especially in this day and age of 24-hour news and the internet. And quite frankly President Obama has nothing to say that I want to hear. The only reason anybody wants to see it is to bask in the warm glow of the Dem chosen one.

Today I was watching CNBC and I saw Rep. Spencer Bacchus from my state, Alabama. He said something that is going to become a battle cry for Conservatives for the next four years.

"The government never solved anything by throwing more money at it."

We have known this for years. Look at the government school system. Every time we get a liberal president and congress we see the budget for government education explode. And every time it's like throwing money down a bottomless hole. It makes liberals think good about themselves and it placates some voters. But when everything is said and done it's just a useless waste of time. It always will be as long as teacher's unions are allowed to set policy.

Another example is the nation's infrastructure. When tax money goes to states and local communities, ostensibly to improve roads, bridges and levees, politicians, conservative and liberal alike, spend that money on pet projects. There was the instance in New Orleans where the local government spent infrastructure money meant for the levees on a fountain. A few years later Hurricane Katrina slammed into NO and the rest is history.

Just a few years ago there was the bridge collapse that was caused by stress fatigue and age. The money that should have been spent repairing that preexisting bridge was instead spent on building new structures just so politicians could get their names placed on them. And again people died.

In other words you have to change what you are doing to improve, not just throw money at it.

Well most of you have heard of the welfare mom that recently had octuplets, bringing her brood to fourteen. Now that the imperial congress has passed the new stimulus bill and along with all of the other liberal spending that's going on, we now have a new "octomom": the federal government.

Events over the last few days have shown that the worst of the financial crisis has already occurred: fifty-two percent of Americans elected Barack Obama president. It is a cliché that in tough economic times people vote for Democrats, but it is what it is. The opposite cliché is that when the issue is national security, the people usually vote for Republicans. In this year’s election, people only saw the economic trouble and not the threat from Islamic terrorists and rogue nations. After all, 9/11 was seven years ago. That kind of thing can’t happen again, right? Wrong.

As I am writing this, the Indian people are picking up the pieces from a major coordinated attack in the city of Mumbai. There are hostages and over one hundred people are dead and hundreds are injured. Of course, Islamic terrorists have claimed responsibility. Witnesses claim that some of the terrorists were demanding American and British tourists.

Closer to home intelligence officials claim that they have credible evidence that terrorists are targeting New York City subways for Thanksgiving. The believed goal is to close down Amtrak’s Northeast corridor. This would shut down holiday traffic, as well as Black Friday traffic between Boston and Washington, D.C.

As I said earlier the problem is that the Americans’ that voted for Obama were only concerned with the economy. They apparently forgot the harm that September 11 caused to our economy. And there are worse threats than airplanes slamming into buildings.

Many on the Left have argued that they are just as strong on national defense as Republicans. Yet Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairperson of the House Financial Services Committee wants to downsize the military. In addition, Vice President-elect Joe Biden told backers during the campaign that he believed that there would be a major terrorist attack within six months of Obama’s inauguration, “to test” the new president. He added that then-candidate Obama might do some things in response to such an attack that people might not understand. However, he pleaded with people to be patient with him. This statement has always raised the hackles on my neck. It’s not because I feel it confirms what Republicans said about Obama’s lack of experience. It’s because it sounds much more Orwellian than I care for.

We are about eight weeks from the inauguration of a man who has only three years of service on the national level. He did not sponsor any meaningful legislation during that time and mostly voted “present” during legislation. Somehow, he has become the “Chosen One” that will lead this country out of the wilderness that the Left have claimed for the last eight years that we have been wandering in. The Left claim that he has the practical understanding to appoint experienced people that can make up for any lack of experience in any given area. But in the end it will be Barack Obama that has to make the final decision. If the American people have any sense whatsoever they will remember that in 2012. Assuming that is, of course if some group hasn’t irradiated a major city or infected large numbers of people with some horrible plague. If this has happened then the only people that can be held ultimately responsible for such a tragedy will be Barack Obama and the people that voted for him.

Dear Republicans,

Well here we are at the beginning of our long exile from power. We have two groups to blame for our ouster: the leadership in the Republican party and the selfish American people (see my previous post). Because I have already addressed the issue of the selfishness of the American people, and I have already given fair warning to the Democrats about the next two to four years, it's your turn my brothers and sisters.

I originally was going to do a bullet list of the problems facing the Republicans at this time. However, I felt that maybe it would be better to go in depth with the problems and some possible solutions. I mean we have to be optimistic and have a “Yes we can” attitude.

First of all the leaders of the party must be held accountable for their lackluster performance. We have already shed some like Denny Hastert, but it will take a scorched-earth policy to cleanse us of the scourge of neo-conservatism. We should be die-hard conservatives, pure and simple.

The next thing we must rid ourselves of is the label “compassionate conservative”. The very term should make us cringe. It's as if we're admitting the old liberal chestnut that conservatives are crotchety old Scrooges that want to take the home away from the old widow lady. If we truly believe in the merits of our conservative principles, then it is not necessary for us to say that we are “compassionate” conservatives.

We must not put all of our eggs in one basket. While most of the members of our party are God-fearing people who believe in social conservatism, we can't rely on that one side of our nature to win over the moderates and independents. Abortion is murder, pure and simple, but we have no hope of eliminating that horror if we are still in exile or we don't have a super-majority in the Congress. Gay marriage is slowly being decided on a state-by-state basis, and remember we believe in states' rights, right?

Keeping with the topic of diversification we must also not rely too heavily on security and defense as a crutch. We know we are strong on defense and the American people know we are strong on defense. We don't need to keep reminding people, especially in the current economic climate. Obviously the American people are more concerned at this point with getting something-for-nothing, and robbing those that earned it to give to those that didn't to be concerned at this time with little things like national defense (even though we are still fighting a war of terror).

Next we as a party must become a part of the information age. We cannot sit idly by while people like Moveon.org and Daily Kos corner the market on the high tech sector of campaigning. There are some good sites out there, like RedState.com and PajamasMedia.org, but we have to do more. We have to hit iPods, iPhones, YouTube, Blackberries and new emerging venues. We need to add tools to our arsenal, like Flash animation and Conservative web programming. Again we have a start with sites like Stop-him-now.com (which has apparently ceased to exist) which used Flash animation to poke jabs at Obama and the Dems as a whole. But it never achieved the regularity of liberal forums like MarkFiore.com, only producing sporadic animation. In fact, the site started as Stop-her-now.com, and was directed at Hillary Clinton during the primaries. So it never achieved the coherency of purpose that it needed.

Which brings me to our next point. We cannot continue to target Billary—or now Obama—solely. We must take a broad approach to the entire Democrat party. We can target those that lean too far to the Left, but we also have to target the Dems that are considered moderate of conservative. If we are to gain the necessary seats in the Senate we have to go after all comers.

We must be judicious in our use of the filibuster. We don't want to give the Democrats a reason to use the so-called “nuclear” option. We also can use that refusal to use the filibuster as a way to not go on the record without voting the dreaded “present”. This way it will be easier to put the complete responsibility of Democrat failures solely on their own heads. They won't be able to claim that the reason that things are bad is because of Republican obstructionism.

Finally, any Republican candidate that promises to take only public funding should be immediately disqualified for mental incompetence. We need to target smaller donors, like Obama did in this election. It is the only way we can compete.

We have a long road to hoe brothers and sisters and the days will be long and the winds cold but we can reclaim the Congress and the White House if we are persistent and if we stick to our principles.

Love,

The America Report