The racist party hates Reagan

Yes, there is little to distinguish many of the two parties' leaders, but the principles those politicians are supposed to represent couldn't be more diametric.

A response to this with credit to this:

A greater percentage of Congressional Republicans than Democrats supported the Civil Rights Act.

You ought to ask the reasons for Reagan's positions, but you won't, since facts are anathema to you.

Blacks benefited from Reagan's economic policies more than Whites (color-based identifiers are revolting, but since you define people by the melanin-content of their skin cells, so be it).

Pat Buchanan (who's got his own issues with jihad and Israel) invented the term "Southern strategy"; what did he say about the "change" in Republicanism?

"We would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states' rights, human rights, small government, and a strong national defense, and leave it to the ‘party of [Democratic Georgia Gov. Lester] Maddox, [1966 Democratic challenger against Spiro Agnew for Maryland governor George] Mahoney and [Democratic Alabama Gov. George] Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.”

If Southerners wanted to stay with the racist party, they'd have stayed Democrat. They went to the Republican Party because of the freedom issues Buchanan noted.

And right after Reagan's "states rights" speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- where Democrat Michael Dukakis spoke eight years later -- he went to New York to speak before the Urban League.

Reagan opposed "affirmative action" -- racial quotas -- just like JFK, Bayard Rustin, and the Urban League board of directors. He hired Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell. And Reagan signed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday into a national holiday and approved a 25-year extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Why do you hate "states' rights, human rights, small government, and a strong national defense"? Why do you hate America and its citizens of every hue?

Democrats depend on the obedience -- and ignorance -- of "minority" voters in fastening their chains on them.

You're either too gullible to realize it or too complicit to admit it.

If Kennedy were running today, the Democrats would burn him

This is an interesting article on the power of narrative in shaping people's opinions. (I disagree that we don't need someone like Reagan and that America's enemies from the last half-century are no longer threats. If anything, they're in power now.)

A few thoughts awaiting moderation there:

A good story is a wonderful thing; the key to its effectiveness in changing perception is the manipulation of emotion. That's what liberals and other charlatans are good at.

Reagan excelled at exposing the nonsense of the Left and reminding people of what made this nation great: Individual Liberty and moral goodness. We don't have anyone today who both really believes in those ideals and can communicate them plainly.

(And when we get close, the media assassins go for the jugular.)

It wasn't that long ago that I could have voted for a Democrat; John F. Kennedy understood that lower taxes -- which is really just increased freedom -- makes people more prosperous, and he believed in and defended America against its enemies.

If Kennedy were running today, the Democrats would burn him at the stake.

A Christian cannot vote Democrat. (If they do, it's because they've accepted uncritically the nescient propaganda of the left. It's like serving on a jury, where a defense lawyer throws out any lie they can think of to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of at least one juror.)

That party has made the Founding Fathers into potential terrorists and embraces pretty much whatever is perverse, cruel, or tyrannical. It is faithless.

It's too bad that today's Republicans are, by and large, devoid of the passion for freedom and moral rectitude that our Founders and Framers possessed. After all, why vote for a fake liberal when you can get the real thing?

Bold colors

It's easy to see from the comments below why -- while the rest of the Pyrite State was voting for a muscular fraud -- I voted for McClintock.

He's one of the few people who understand what makes America great and can articulate it.

Don't abandon what is true. Fight for it. From here:

Common Sense After a Close Election
Northern Division Republican Women
Rancho Cordova, California
November 17, 2012

"Now let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses and get back in this fight."

After listening to ten days of hand wringing and doom saying from the usual suspects that Republicans must abandon our principles if we are to survive, we need a little of Mark Twain's common sense. I suggest we all take it to heart.

He said, "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

So it is in that spirit that I will begin with three incontrovertible truths about this election.

First, the same election that returned Barack Obama to the White House also returned the second largest House Republican majority since World War II - bigger than anything Newt Gingrich ever had.

Second, according to polls before, during and after this election, the American people agree with us fundamentally on issues involving the economy, Obamacare, government spending, bailouts - you name it.

Third, the American people are about to get a graduate level course in Obamanomics, and at the end of that course, they are going to be a lot sadder and a lot wiser.

That is not to say that there aren't many lessons that we need to learn and to learn well from this election, particularly here in California. But capitulation is not one of them.

Have we forgotten that just two years ago, Republicans campaigned on clear principles of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government? We took strong and united stands to oppose Obamacare, rein in out-of-control spending, roll back the regulatory burdens that are crushing our economy and yes - dare I say it - secure our borders? Have we forgotten that the result was one of the most stunning mid-term elections in American history: a net gain of 63 U.S. House seats, six U.S. Senate seats, 19 state legislatures, six governors and nearly 700 state legislative seats?

Now we're told, just two years later, after a net loss of just eight House seats, two Senate seats and a 2 1/2-percentage point loss of the White House, that we must abandon these principles or consign ourselves to the dustbin of history.

If you want to see a catastrophic election, look at 1976.

We not only lost the Presidency, but as a result of that election the Democrats held 61 U.S. Senate seats (today they have 55); and 292 House seats (today they have just 201).

Then, we heard the same chorus of impending doom that we hear today. We had to moderate our image. We had to broaden our base. In short, that we had to become more like the Democrats.

Here is what Ronald Reagan said to the naysayers of 1976:

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don 't know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, "We must broaden the base of our party"-when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents...

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Fortunately, we had the good sense to take that advice, and four years later Ronald Reagan became President, and shortly after that it was morning again in America. That would never have happened if we had listened to the usual suspects of their day and become a pathetic reflection of the Democrats. As Phil Gramm said, "why would anyone want to vote for a fake Democrat when they can have the real thing?"

The first of the cold stove lids we are told not to sit on is illegal immigration. Republicans, they say, must accept the notion that our nation can no longer control its borders and we should declare amnesty for the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now in this country. We should do so, we are told, because our position on border security has hopelessly alienated Latino voters who would otherwise share our values.

It is true that Latino voters are a growing part of the American electorate - making up ten percent of the vote in 2012, of which 71 percent voted for Barack Obama, according to the CBS exit poll.

Sean Trende is the senior political analyst for Real Clear Politics. Last May, he published an article addressing this argument directly. He made three points.

First, Latino voters are not a monolithic group on this issue. Citing 2008 exit polling, he noted that a majority of Latino voters "either thought that illegal immigration was fairly unimportant or thought that it was important and voted Republican."

So why are Latinos voting for Democrats? Very simply, he said, once you adjust for socio-economic status, Latinos vote pretty much the same as the general voting population. But because they are disproportionately poor, they tend to vote disproportionately Democratic. However, as they begin to work their way up the socio-economic ladder and assimilate into American society, they become more and more Republican.

Second, citing research from the Pew Institute, he pointed out that the wave of illegal immigration has now crested, and may actually be reversing. He noted that every immigration wave has followed this pattern. Those who stay become more and more assimilated and more and more Republican as the years go by.

As recently as 20 years ago, we used to hear a lot about the Italian vote or the Irish vote. We don't hear about that anymore because they have melted into the general population. The demographic tide, he said, is not running against the Republicans, but running with them.

Third, he points out that a very sizeable part of the Republican base is firmly opposed to illegal immigration, and that abandoning that position could be politically catastrophic. He reminded us, "In a large, diverse country, every move to gain one member of a political coalition usually alienates another member."

Heather MacDonald makes the same point in the aftermath of the election. She notes that 62 percent of Latino voters support Obamacare. They overwhelmingly support higher taxes to pay for a larger government and more public services. These are not voters who will suddenly flock to the Republican banner because we have reversed our position on border security.

That's not to say Republicans should ignore the Latino vote - far from it - and I will get to that in a few minutes. But to suggest that Republicans need to reverse themselves on a fundamental issue of national sovereignty and the rule of law is unprincipled, counterproductive, self-destructive and wrong.

Ironically, the issues where most Latino and African-American voters do agree with us are the social issues, like abortion and marriage -- but of course, we're told by the same naysayers that we should repudiate our position on these messy social issues.

Let's look closer at the polling on the social issues. According to exit polling by Public Opinion Strategies, it is true that five percent of voters last week said that the most important issue in their vote for President was their pro-choice/pro-abortion position. Five percent of the entire electorate is nothing to sneeze at.

But four percent of voters said that the most important issue in casting their vote for President was their pro-life/anti-abortion position. That's a statistical tie.

I have a question for you. How many of those hard-core, single-issue abortion-on-demand Obama voters will suddenly switch their votes to Republicans once we've renounced our position on this issue?

Now, here's a bonus question: how many of that four percent of the electorate who support us solely because of our pro-life position are going to stay with us once we have repudiated them?

It is important in politics to know the difference between addition and subtraction. Addition is what creates majorities and subtraction is what destroys them. In this single exercise, we have just subtracted four percent of the entire American electorate from our vote and added little or nothing.

Now, repeat this process on every other so-called social issue, and tell me if we will be better off or worse off for taking this advice.

With all this said, there is no blinking at the fact that we just lost an election that we should have won, and to pretend there's nothing wrong meets Einstein's definition of insanity. There's a great deal wrong and a great deal that we need to address.

The voters who appeared at the polls agree with us on Obamacare. According to the CBS exit poll, by a plurality of 49 to 44 percent, they want to repeal some or all of Obamacare.

They agree with us on the size of government. By a margin of 51 to 43 percent, they believe that government is "doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."

They agree with us on taxes. By a resounding margin of 63 to 33 percent, they disagreed with the statement that "taxes should be raised to help cut the deficit."

Perhaps most telling of all, 52 percent of voters agreed "things in this country today are seriously off on the wrong track," and yet then voted to continue down that wrong track for another four years.

As Lincoln said, "The voters are everything. If the voters get their backsides too close to the fire, they'll just have to sit on the blisters a while." It is a painful experience; but it is a learning experience. And at the end of that experience, they emerge sadder but wiser and in time for the next election.

We are winning the issues. And that means over time we will be winning the votes -- but only if we stay true to our principles and true to the millions of Americans who are already with us and many more who may not consider themselves Republicans today - but who believe as we believe.

What was the single biggest political movement in 2009 and 2010? It was the much-maligned, politically incorrect Tea Party, which energized fully one third of the American electorate across party lines. Although 60 percent were Republicans, 20 percent were Independents and 20 percent were Democrats. Long before the Tea Party, we had another name for that phenomenon. We used to call it the "Reagan Coalition." But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told the Tea Party to get out. And many did.

Who brought a tidal wave of young people into the party? It was the much maligned and politically incorrect Ron Paul, whose simple message of unadulterated freedom resonated deeply on college campuses. Eight thousand UC Berkeley students turned out last year to hear that message. But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told Ron Paul and his supporters to get out. And they did. In fact, many of their votes went to Obama.

A well-intentioned supporter e-mailed me last week and said, "we've got to kick the religious right out of the party." I reminded him that we did that in 1976, when the religious right voted for Jimmy Carter.

My point is, you cannot build a majority by systematically ejecting the constituent parts of that coalition. You build a majority by adding to that coalition by taking your principles to new constituencies.

Working Americans of every race know instinctively that you cannot borrow and spend your way rich. We need to appeal to them.

Immigrants came to this country to escape the stultifying central planning and corrupt bureaucracies that ravaged their economies. We need to appeal to them.

For the first time in our history, young people face a bleaker future than their parents enjoyed. We need to appeal to them.

The very groups of voters most damaged by Obama's policies are those who voted for Obama - we need to appeal to them.

Not in the closing days of a campaign poisoned with partisanship - but right now.

We need to recognize that a large portion of our population is not familiar with the self-evident truths of the American Founding and has no compass with which to follow back to the prosperity, happiness and fulfillment that is the hallmark of free societies.

Without that clarion call - without a party of freedom willing to paint our positions in bold colors - I am afraid that as the economy suffocates under the avalanche of government burdens, intrusions, restrictions, regulations and edicts, people in their growing despair, will increasingly turn to the false hope that paternalistic government offers.

The only antidote to that is the self-evident truth of the American founding: that freedom works and we need to put it back to work.

Like it or not, we are at this moment the only party equipped to revive and restore those truths and take them to the millions of Americans who are desperately searching for them.

Great parties are built upon great principles, and they are judged by their devotion to those principles. Since its inception, the central principle of the Republican Party can be summarized in a word: freedom. The closer we have hewn to this principle, the better we have done; the farther we have drifted from it, the worse that we - and the country - have done.

Dick Armey put it more simply: "When we act like us, we win, and when we act like them, we lose."

The Republican Women formed originally as the educational arm of the Republican Party. Never has that role been more important than it is today. We will not win the political battle until we win the battle over principles. We need to begin that campaign today. We can be confident that these principles resonate, but only when we are true to them with our existing constituencies while we reach out with them to new constituencies.

That is our challenge. That is our destiny. That is the salvation of our country. Now, fellow Republicans, let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses, and get back in this fight.

Man without God makes men into gods

"Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid." -Ronald Reagan

Recently I was speaking with a coworker about the proper role of government in relation to the Individual. I made what I thought was an unanswerable argument: Who knows better how to spend your money, you or a politician living thousands of miles away? Liberalism is merely Parasites and Tyrants Robbing Free Men.

This coworker seems like a genuinely nice man and of above-average intelligence, so -- despite past experience -- I was caught off-guard by his reply. His answer was: "I'm a humanist. I believe in the goodness of people."

I prefer that tyrants and those who serve them be honest about their lust for power and their contempt for others, but he seems sincere. He might want to believe that he's come to a well-founded position, but I know he hasn't, and here's how:

Nevermind that Thomas Jefferson warned, "Let no more be heard of confidence in Man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution" (apparently, power corrupts only Conservatives). If this man really believes that innate human goodness permits sacrificing essential Liberty for a little temporary safety, then why doesn't he give his whole paycheck to the government and trust that they'll take care of him? Or, if he really believes that politicians can be trusted because of their basic decency -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- then why doesn't he believe that every Individual is capable of making equally rational, moral, and wise decisions? Or does he think that politicians are born just a little bit better than you and me?

(Liberal elitism might be a little closer to the truth.)

Reagan understood this, noting that those who reject God worship the state. (Which applies even to Islam, since it is impossible to reject the living God any more fully than does Muhammad's hellish "religion," which fuses mosque and state.)

Man without God makes men into gods:

We've heard in our century far too much of the sounds of anguish from those who live under totalitarian rule. We've seen too many monuments made not out of marble or stone but out of barbed wire and terror. But from these terrible places have come survivors, witnesses to the triumph of the human spirit over the mystique of state power, prisoners whose spiritual values made them the rulers of their guards. With their survival, they brought us "the secret of the camps," a lesson for our time and for any age: Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.

That's why the Marxist vision of man without God must eventually be seen as an empty and a false faith -- the second oldest in the world -- first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with whispered words of temptation: "Ye shall be as gods." The crisis of the Western world, Whittaker Chambers reminded us, exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God. "The Western world does not know it," he said about our struggle, "but it already possesses the answer to this problem -- but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in man."

Another Islamic revolution? For non-Muslims within the borders of Dar al-Islam, it's out of the frying pan and into the fire

Supporting a popular Muslim insurrection against a government allied to the U.S. worked so well in '79.  Unsurprisingly, devastating incompetence (treason?) in domestic affairs isn't the only thing that President Obama's borrowed from the rabid anti-Semite Jimmy Carter.

(Indeed, the allegedly-former-Muslim-in-Chief is trying to convince you that he's a president in the mold of Reagan, hoping that his presidency will follow the same course as the Gipper's. Well, Obama's reign is following the same script, only he's not playing the lead, he's playing the lead's predecessor.

We all knew Ronald Reagan. Obama's no Reagan.)

The American Revolution is the only time in human history that a people fought for its freedom, won it, and founded their new nation on the belief that the Creator gives irrevocably to all people the rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of moral Goodness (Happiness). This was possible as an expression of the will of the American people only because of what those people believed: They were the product of a fundamentally Christian civilization. (Even Thomas Jefferson -- often exhumed and paraded by the God-hating left as a "rebuttal" to simple statements of fact pointing out that America was founded as a Christian nation -- declared that he was a Christian in the only sense Christ intended, "sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.")

To expect (or wish for) an uprising in Islamic lands to result in something similar to our own is beyond wishful thinking; you can't expect a culture that considers "beautiful" and "Ideal" the words and deeds of a genocidal, pedophilic, megalomaniacal, emotionally-stunted tyrant to result in anything remotely resembling a free society. And "democracy"? When the people are ruled by Muhammad, democracy is only another path -- stupidly endorsed by the West's clueless and craven "leaders" -- to shari'a.  Our own recent history proves this.

In the '90s, President Clinton bombed Christians to aid jihadists.  In the last decade, President Bush used our best and bravest to enshrine shari'a in the new constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq. (The latter's ancient Jewish population is gone and its Christians flee (when they can); those who remain are intimidated, abused, and murdered.) And today, President Obama supports an Islamic revolution in Arab Muslim lands (confirmed here); when it was the people of Iran protesting against a shari'a state, he was . . .  eating ice cream.

In Iraq, we removed a nominally-Muslim tyrant (Saddam worshiped himself more than Allah) and replaced him with a system of laws which sends Muslim souls to hell and creates hell-on-Earth for non-Muslims (and Muslim apostates, women, and little girls).

What reason do we have to believe that if successful, the current uprising throughout Dar al-Islam will result in anything more than moving its peoples -- especially its non-Muslims -- out of the frying pan and into the fire?

As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide

The election of B. Hussein Obama was a self-inflicted wound.

Both time and the courage of the American patriot will tell whether it's mortal or not.

We have the Enemy Within, both the leftist who wants America crippled and disgraced, begging for scraps from foreign masters, and the Muslim -- imported and homegrown -- who seeks to usurp our Constitution and replace it with the most vile, totalitarian, and hellish ideology ever thrust upon the Earth.

In Obama, it looks like we got two-for-the-price-of-one.  What a deal!

Who applauds B. Hussein Obama's Nobel Appeasement Prize? Those are not friends of America cheering his "achievements," which so far have been bankrupting and disarming the Republic; bleeding our military by binding them with suicidal Rules of Engagement; eating ice cream while civilians protesting against Muslim tyranny in Iran are butchered in their streets; responding to our military's request for more troops in order to avoid losing in Afghanistan by going to Denmark to beg for an Olympics that would divert billions in federal money to his fellow criminals in Chicago; and apologizing to, groveling at the feet of, and defiling the sacrifices of more than two centuries of free men in deference to every two-bit, tinpot leftist and Muslim tyrant on the globe.

Stop the bleeding, America. We need in positions of leadership informed and honest men. Tom McClintock understands what makes America great, and what must be done to save it.

From here:

When he was 28 years old, Abraham Lincoln posed this haunting question to the Young Mens Lyceum of Springfield:

He asked, “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.["]

Today, THIS generation of Americans has arrived at one of the great turning points of history. Upon the outcome of this struggle is nothing less than the question of whether America is to fade away as yet another failed socialist state, or whether this generation of Americans will rescue, redeem and restore the founding principles that made the American Republic the most prosperous and successful in the history of the world.

It has now been nine months since the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States – with all the hope and trust that the American people placed in him for our future.

Think about what has happened in these nine months. And think about how far our country has strayed from what Jefferson called the “sum of good government.” -- what he described as “a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Last year’s deficit of $450 billion has nearly quadrupled to $1.6 TRILLION.

Let’s put that in perspective. All of the debt accumulated by this nation from the very first day of the George Washington administration to the very last day of the George W. Bush administration, will now double over the next five years and nearly triple over the next ten under the budget that President Obama signed.

America under an Obama Administration, and the antidote

If only the MSM had been half as honest.

Delivered 33 years ago, the speech below by Governor Ronald Reagan seems prescient. Change the names and dates, and this is what we should be hearing from now until 2012:

Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate.

Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached “the gospel,” in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism which was, in truth, a call to collectivism.

Now, it is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own.

Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. Even George McGovern donned sackcloth and ashes and did penance for the good people of South Dakota.

But let’s not be so naive as to think we are witnessing a mass conversion to the principles of conservatism. Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type. In their view, apparently, the ends justified the means.

The “Young Turks” had campaigned against “evil politicians.” They turned against committee chairmen of their own party, displaying a taste and talent as cutthroat power politicians quite in contrast to their campaign rhetoric and idealism. Still, we must not forget that they molded their campaigning to fit what even they recognized was the mood of the majority.

And we must see to it that the people are reminded of this as they now pursue their ideological goals—and pursue them they will.

I know you are aware of the national polls which show that a greater (and increasing) number of Americans—Republicans, Democrats and independents—classify themselves as “conservatives” than ever before. And a poll of rank-and-file union members reveals dissatisfaction with the amount of power their own leaders have assumed, and a resentment of their use of that power for partisan politics. Would it shock you to know that in that poll 68 percent of rank-and-file union members of this country came out endorsing right-to-work legislation?

These polls give cause for some optimism, but at the same time reveal a confusion that exists and the need for a continued effort to “spread the word.”

In another recent survey, of 35,000 college and university students polled, three-fourths blame American business and industry for all of our economic and social ills. The same three-fourths think the answer is more (and virtually complete) regimentation and government control of all phases of business—including the imposition of wage and price controls. Yet, 80 percent in the same poll want less government interference in their own lives!

In 1972 the people of this country had a clear-cut choice, based on the issues—to a greater extent than any election in half a century. In overwhelming numbers they ignored party labels, not so much to vote for a man or even a policy as to repudiate a philosophy. In doing so they repudiated that final step into the welfare state—that call for the confiscation and redistribution of their earnings on a scale far greater than what we now have. They repudiated the abandonment of national honor and a weakening of this nation’s ability to protect itself.

A study has been made that is so revealing that I’m not surprised it has been ignored by a certain number of political commentators and columnists. The political science department of Georgetown University researched the mandate of the 1972 election and recently presented its findings at a seminar.

Taking several major issues which, incidentally, are still the issues of the day, they polled rank-and-file members of the Democratic party on their approach to these problems. Then they polled the delegates to the two major national conventions—the leaders of the parties.

They found the delegates to the Republican convention almost identical in their responses to those of the rank-and-file Republicans. Yet, the delegates to the Democratic convention were miles apart from the thinking of their own party members.

The mandate of 1972 still exists. The people of America have been confused and disturbed by events since that election, but they hold an unchanged philosophy.

Our task is to make them see that what we represent is identical to their own hopes and dreams of what America can and should be. If there are questions as to whether the principles of conservatism hold up in practice, we have the answers to them. Where conservative principles have been tried, they have worked. Gov. Meldrim Thomson is making them work in New Hampshire; so is Arch Moore in West Virginia and Mills Godwin in Virginia. Jack Williams made them work in Arizona and I’m sure Jim Edwards will in South Carolina.

If you will permit me, I can recount my own experience in California.

When I went to Sacramento eight years ago, I had the belief that government was no deep, dark mystery, that it could be operated efficiently by using the same common sense practiced in our everyday life, in our homes, in business and private affairs.

The “lab test” of my theory – California—was pretty messed up after eight years of a road show version of the Great Society. Our first and only briefing came from the outgoing director of finance, who said: “We’re spending $1 million more a day than we’re taking in. I have a golf date. Good luck!” That was the most cheerful news we were to hear for quite some time.

California state government was increasing by about 5,000 new employees a year. We were the welfare capital of the world with 16 percent of the nation’s caseload. Soon, California’s caseload was increasing by 40,000 a month.

We turned to the people themselves for help. Two hundred and fifty experts in the various fields volunteered to serve on task forces at no cost to the taxpayers. They went into every department of state government and came back with 1,800 recommendations on how modern business practices could be used to make government more efficient. We adopted 1,600 of them.

We instituted a policy of “cut, squeeze and trim” and froze the hiring of employees as replacements for retiring employees or others leaving state service.

After a few years of struggling with the professional welfarists, we again turned to the people. First, we obtained another task force and, when the legislature refused to help implement its recommendations, we presented the recommendations to the electorate.

It still took some doing. The legislature insisted our reforms would not work; that the needy would starve in the streets; that the workload would be dumped on the counties; that property taxes would go up and that we’d run up a deficit the first year of $750 million.

That was four years ago. Today, the needy have had an average increase of 43 percent in welfare grants in California, but the taxpayers have saved $2 billion by the caseload not increasing that 40,000 a month. Instead, there are some 400,000 fewer on welfare today than then.

Forty of the state’s 58 counties have reduced property taxes for two years in a row (some for three). That $750-million deficit turned into an $850-million surplus which we returned to the people in a one-time tax rebate. That wasn’t easy. One state senator described that rebate as “an unnecessary expenditure of public funds.”

For more than two decades governments—federal, state, local—have been increasing in size two-and-a-half times faster than the population increase. In the last 10 years they have increased the cost in payroll seven times as fast as the increase in numbers.

We have just turned over to a new administration in Sacramento a government virtually the same size it was eight years ago. With the state’s growth rate, this means that government absorbed a workload increase, in some departments as much as 66 percent.

We also turned over—for the first time in almost a quarter of a century—a balanced budget and a surplus of $500 million. In these eight years just passed, we returned to the people in rebates, tax reductions and bridge toll reductions $5.7 billion. All of this is contrary to the will of those who deplore conservatism and profess to be liberals, yet all of it is pleasing to its citizenry.

Make no mistake, the leadership of the Democratic party is still out of step with the majority of Americans.

Speaker Carl Albert recently was quoted as saying that our problem is “60 percent recession, 30 percent inflation and 10 percent energy.” That makes as much sense as saying two and two make 22.

Without inflation there would be no recession. And unless we curb inflation we can see the end of our society and economic system. The painful fact is we can only halt inflation by undergoing a period of economic dislocation—a recession, if you will.

We can take steps to ease the suffering of some who will be hurt more than others, but if we turn from fighting inflation and adopt a program only to fight recession we are on the road to disaster.

In his first address to Congress, the president asked Congress to join him in an all-out effort to balance the budget. I think all of us wish that he had re-issued that speech instead of this year’s budget message.

What side can be taken in a debate over whether the deficit should be $52 billion or $70 billion or $80 billion preferred by the profligate Congress?

Inflation has one cause and one cause only: government spending more than government takes in. And the cure to inflation is a balanced budget. We know, of course, that after 40 years of social tinkering and Keynesian experimentation that we can’t do this all at once, but it can be achieved. Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue: you have to learn to say “no.”

This is no time to repeat the shopworn panaceas of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society. John Kenneth Galbraith, who, in my opinion, is living proof that economics is an inexact science, has written a new book. It is called “Economics and the Public Purpose.” In it, he asserts that market arrangements in our economy have given us inadequate housing, terrible mass transit, poor health care and a host of other miseries. And then, for the first time to my knowledge, he advances socialism as the answer to our problems.

Shorn of all side issues and extraneous matter, the problem underlying all others is the worldwide contest for the hearts and minds of mankind. Do we find the answers to human misery in freedom as it is known, or do we sink into the deadly dullness of the Socialist ant heap?

Those who suggest that the latter is some kind of solution are, I think, open to challenge. Let’s have no more theorizing when actual comparison is possible. There is in the world a great nation, larger than ours in territory and populated with 250 million capable people. It is rich in resources and has had more than 50 uninterrupted years to practice socialism without opposition.

We could match them, but it would take a little doing on our part. We’d have to cut our paychecks back by 75 percent; move 60 million workers back to the farm; abandon two-thirds of our steel-making capacity; destroy 40 million television sets; tear up 14 of every 15 miles of highway; junk 19 of every 20 automobiles; tear up two-thirds of our railroad track; knock down 70 percent of our houses; and rip out nine out of every 10 telephones. Then, all we have to do is find a capitalist country to sell us wheat on credit to keep us from starving!

Our people are in a time of discontent. Our vital energy supplies are threatened by possibly the most powerful cartel in human history. Our traditional allies in Western Europe are experiencing political and economic instability bordering on chaos.

We seem to be increasingly alone in a world grown more hostile, but we let our defenses shrink to pre-Pearl Harbor levels. And we are conscious that in Moscow the crash build-up of arms continues. The SALT II agreement in Vladivostok, if not re-negotiated, guarantees the Soviets a clear missile superiority sufficient to make a “first strike” possible, with little fear of reprisal. Yet, too many congressmen demand further cuts in our own defenses, including delay if not cancellation of the B-1 bomber.

I realize that millions of Americans are sick of hearing about Indochina, and perhaps it is politically unwise to talk of our obligation to Cambodia and South Vietnam. But we pledged—in an agreement that brought our men home and freed our prisoners—to give our allies arms and ammunition to replace on a one-for-one basis what they expend in resisting the aggression of the Communists who are violating the cease-fire and are fully aided by their Soviet and Red Chinese allies. Congress has already reduced the appropriation to half of what they need and threatens to reduce it even more.

Can we live with ourselves if we, as a nation, betray our friends and ignore our pledged word? And, if we do, who would ever trust us again? To consider committing such an act so contrary to our deepest ideals is symptomatic of the erosion of standards and values. And this adds to our discontent.

We did not seek world leadership; it was thrust upon us. It has been our destiny almost from the first moment this land was settled. If we fail to keep our rendezvous with destiny or, as John Winthrop said in 1630, “Deal falsely with our God,” we shall be made “a story and byword throughout the world.”

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don ‘t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party”—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.

And let it provide indexing—adjusting the brackets to the cost of living—so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.

Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.

Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.

Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.

And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.”

We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.