The National Republican Party doesn’t seem to understand why so many conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians in the GOP reject their leadership on economic and fiscal matters. By 2006, many activists and members of the Republican Base were furious with the spending, the deficits, and debt under which their Republican-controlled Congress and Republican-controlled White House were operating.
The economics of the Republican electorate make a great deal more sense than the economics of their party, since regulation, corruption, bureaucracy, and subsidies are all inefficient economic mechanisms. Simplicity costs less and provides more efficacy than any complex system; and does anyone believe that our government is efficient or efficacious? Is there anyone who believes that we are operating a cost-effective government? Efficacy and efficiency are really all the Republican base has asked for.
The Republican electorate, quite simply expects to be able to understand our economic and fiscal system. This is not too much to ask. There is no good reason for making things as complicated as our government has made them. We recognize that the complexities of this government are designed to obfuscate the process by which the government picks winners and losers, while making the middle class pay for everything – and this is unacceptable.
This is why Republican voters go nuts with every new Omnibus or CR bill.
The average American knows that if they ran their households the way their government ran its’ affairs, they would be in jail. Corruption and fraud seem to be acceptable for anyone entrenched in Washington D.C. Our politicians are simply so accustomed to inefficiency, waste, fraud, and the high price tags that come with fixing all those pesky unintended consequences, that they simply cannot empathize with the American citizen anymore.
The average American views waste, fraud, inefficiency, and corruption as intolerable, not as necessary evils or the price of doing business in Washington.
The economics of the Republican Base are predicated upon principles of free market capitalism, fair market systems, efficient capital mechanisms, and transparency along the way. Their government, on the other hand, appears to stick up their nose at such responsible standards.
It is not necessary to run such large deficits, accumulate so many trillion dollars in debt, or to spend so many hundreds of billions on federal programs. The government has set for themselves the lowest ethical and fiscal standards, standards that the average American would never be permitted to live under. We wonder why the government operates at the lowest common denominator, while the citizen is held to a set of higher standards.
The hypocrisy rightfully creates resentment. I think our politicians would be surprised just how generous we Republicans would be with our tax dollars, if we trusted the government that spent them. But our government is not trustworthy or responsible.
To make matters worse, politicians treat their constituents as if they are all ignorant rubes when it comes to the making of the federal fiscal sausage. Yet, many of their constituents balance their budgets, save for retirement, and sacrifice immediate desires for long term stability. It’s impossible for folks who take such painstaking care of their own fiscal lives to fathom a government which demonstrates such reckless irresponsibility and carelessness with their own tax dollars.
I’m tired of listening to people criticizing Republican voters as if their expectations are unrealistic or ill-informed. They aren’t. The fact is, that Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC are running a reckless, irresponsible, overly-complex, wasteful, and inefficient government, and making all of us pay for the consequences. It isn’t right, it isn’t necessary and it ought to change.
Originally published on PendletonPenn.com
