Lesson #2 From the Debacle

In his seven years as Speaker, Dennis Hastert has spent like a Democrat. Worse still, he thinks the Democrats would have been so much worse that he wasn't even all that bad. The single silver lining now is that the Republicans will have a new leader. President Bush never asked for a balanced budget, so some of the blame goes to him for this Congress' utter failure to govern responsibly on fiscal issues. Mark Twain famously said that the only officially recognized native American organized crime element is Congress. I can see what he was talking about.
I pressed one name for a Libertarian yesterday, and a couple of my friends who favor smaller government voted straight party for Libertarians. In 2004, the moral base saved the GOP, due largely to initiatives on same-sex marriage, but the fiscal conservative base has been deserted by its party. I haven't had a home in several years, and the agenda of 1994, including the Balanced Budget Amendment, is dead. In 1995, Newt Gingrich led Congress to pass a balanced budget, which President Clinton stalled until the government shut down. Today's GOP would not even consider balancing the budget. Lesson #2: DON'T FORGET YOUR BASE!!