EXCLUSIVE: Social cons wrangling for top GOP post

Was this article even edited?

The Republican Party has to get back to its roots of Honest Government of the people for the people by the people. Democrats are for the tax and spend, Pay to Play, big government that funnels our tax money to their friends. That is why they fight so hard to control Congress. Who is going to pay for all of this! We the people will and we will be in the same boat as we were in when we had to fight British dominance in our Revolution. The moderates are trying to make the party just as bad as the Democrat party. Time to get back to our core Conservative Principles!

There's just no place in the Republican party for the moderate voice. We need to lose these ultra conservatives, with their religious obsession and bigotry, and move into the 21st century. How will the party ever appeal to ethnic groups when it favors Christianity over all other religions and is lead by old school rich white racists? Without the support of moderates and ethnic groups, the party will die.

Even after the facts of the past 16 years of Democrats leaving a surplus and the republicans and their incredible deficits some still try to trot out the "Tax and Spend" Democrats! Incredible. No, the Republicans need to go through their purging of any reasonable, rationale people. This is nothing more than a Mcarthy style loyalty/litmus test. Taking a once proud, rational and responsible political party and turning it to even more of an extremist fringe. Not all Democrats are Liberals, and it used to be that not all Republicans were Conservatives... but that is gone now.

I registered in order to leave this comment. What a load of nonsense. This woman makes a living writing this stuff? Yikes.

It's quite true that the Republican Party has stood for fiscal conservatism. That's one reason I've tended to vote for Republican candidates though I've also voted for Democrats and Independents, having never voted a straight ticket in my entire voting life. It's also true that Democrats have been more willing to engage in public spending, historically. Those facts acknowledged, in recent decades the Republicans have become at least as willing as Democrats to tax and spend. The difference, I'm sorry to say, is that some Republicans won't admit it. Even were I to be one of those who think President Bush's visage deserves a place on Mount Rushmore (I don't), I would have to admit he is leaving us with the worst deficit ever, according to many articles I've read -- but whose accuracy I can't vouch for, since I'm no economist -- after adjusting for inflation, except right after World War II. Some of that spending has been necessary, of course. For instance, once the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, we couldn't very well leave the troops slowly twisting in the wind (sometimes literally). Whether we should have gone in in the first place and whether or not we ought to get out now are entirely separate issues from our moral and legal obligation to give our troops the support they need. A lot of our spending is absolutely wasteful, and the responsibility -- or pox -- is found squarely at the feet of *both* parties. Consider agricultural subsidies. I grew up in what was then a very conservative rural area, growing up on a small ranch myself. Local farmers objected strenuously to subsidies other than in emergency situations, especially those *not* to grow crops. My Father dabbled in farming early on, but when he was forced to leave a field fallow one year -- and offered a subsidy -- and told he could grow the same crop in another, government-specified field he needed to leave fallow that particular year, he did the best he could: he quietly accepted the check, which came by regular mail, then tore it up and sent it back, with a damning letter of objection. And he abandoned his efforts to establish any farming on the property. That was in the Eisenhower years, the latter 1950's, by the way. Like it or not, we have a new president coming in soon who campaigned on change. Let's just hope that he can pull it off in the fiscal arena, even if only a little. (And that's not an implied criticism of any of his proposals; I'm not getting into whether or not I support this or that proposal in this post.)