Joshua's Place

What Conservatives Stand For!
9/26/2005

I have been hearing conservatives contemplating the idea of abandoning the GOP, because our agenda is not getting through fast enough. Or that there is too much pork in some of our legislation. Or that President Bush is not playing hardball with the democrats. Or some other issue. I can’t tell you how many times I heard these kinds of threats today. Some of them may be empty threats, but there is still cause for concern. I am a card carrying member of the party, and even I do not agree with everything the President does, but I think giving up because one you disagree with someone on one issue is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead, we should hold our current representatives accountable, by letting them know how we feel about the issues. If they don’t listen to our demands, then we should replace them, but not with democrats. The answer is not to stay home on Election Day. The answer is not to decrease our GOTV or campaign efforts. The answer is to work even harder to elect more conservative republicans, not just in general elections, but in primaries as well. It is my opinion that voting in a primary election is just as important as voting in a general election. So after we make phone calls, send e-mails, letters, and faxes to our representatives to let them know how we feel, we should get out the vote in any primary elections coming up. We should also support GOP recruiting efforts. Another thing we need to do is to continue to get our message out to the public, The MSM filter is still in effect, so I urge everyone to call talk radio, write letters to the editor, and post articles online. If we hold their feet to the fire, we will get our agenda passed.

I’d like to bring up another point. We are making some gains legislatively. In spite of everything the democrats and the media has thrown at us for the past four years, the Bush Administration has amazingly managed to get a lot of good legislation passed, now that our side has increased its majorities in the house and in the senate. We can push even more of our agenda through if we hold our representatives accountable, and if we continue to support elected republicans in the house, the senate, and the judiciary.

There are those that complain that any legislation that is passed doesn’t cut the mustard. They say that there is too much pork in it. I tend to agree that there are some problems with some of this legislation, but I think that we should continue to work to fix the problems. Legislation will never be perfect, because it is written by imperfect people. But that doesn’t mean we should give up! It will always be difficult to get legislation with no pork, because one man’s important project is another man’s pork. But there is a grassroots conservative movement to get rid of some of that pork, which has had some great success. There is also a DC establishment movement to cut the pork to help pay for Katrina Relief!

We also need to understand that we do not have enough votes in the senate to pass our agenda on our own if we don’t reach across the isle on some issues. I’m not saying we should compromise our core values, but it is almost impossible to pass legislation without some compormise. We only have 48 solid republicans in the senate because several republicans are moderates that tend to vote based on what seems popular at the moment. That means we have to throw the other side a few bones sometimes to be able to pass our agenda. In spite of all that, I do believe that the congress has passed some pretty important legislation since the start of President Bush’s second term. The legislation in question may not be everything we want, and it may have some drawbacks, but it will do a lot more good than harm. But we should still do our best to elect more conservative republicans, so we will have to make fewer compromises.

I also want to point out that other side doesn’t have an agenda. Our fellow democrats have been running the show for 60 years, with little to show for it. For instance, they have poured billions of dollars into social programs that have failed to decrease poverty. Our friends the democrats have good intentions, but little to show for it. Poverty has actually increased since the Great Society! And they have no plan to fix any of this! They just oppose everything we try to do, even if they know it is good for the country. But they have had a lot of influence in the last four decades, and it will take time to overcome the roadblocks they have put in place that make it tough to get our agenda passed. It will take more than 10 years to eradicate some of those roadblocks, but if we continue working hard, we will be able to make it so that democrats will be out of power for many decades to come, and we will be able to finally pass our agenda.

This is the part where we let our representatives know where we stand. But before I get to that, I have come up with some basic principles that describe what conservatism is.

• We believe that America is mostly a God fearing nation, and that it is our duty to help spread freedom and democracy around the world.
• We believe that Americans are basically good people, and that they are very generous with their time and money in times of crises.
• We believe in making government smaller.
• We believe that states rights supersede federal rights.
• We believe that people succeed by working hard, and taking responsibility for their own lives.
• We believe in defending our country from those that would harm us.
• We believe that our country was founded by God fearing men, who believed we should live moral lives, but that the state should respect religious freedoms.
• We believe in making our economy stronger.

Now that you know what it is that we stand for, and what we believe in, I would like to point out some issues that we feel strongly about, and how we want those issues to be taken care of. There are many links to sites that will explain what we want in detail. Read up on them before complaining that they are not good solutions.

• We want secure borders, and reduced illegal immigration. We want our laws to be enforced!
• We want Federal election reform.
• We want Constructionist Judges appointed to the courts.
• Tax Reform - we want to replace the current tax code. It is too complicated, there are too many loopholes, and it is unfair. We want the Fair Tax instituted.
• We want to cut wasteful government spending.
• We want to start drilling for oil in U. S. territories, and we want to build more refineries, so we will be less dependent on foreign oil, so that the price of gasoline will decrease!
• We need Social Security Reform.
• We want innocent life protected.
• We want marriage to be protected.

Yours truly, Joshua Clinard @ 2:44 pm