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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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POLITICAL ROULETTE Contemporary students learn that Republicans called for troop-withdrawals and demanded Democratic officials’ resignations when things were going poorly during World War. It was just like today…Wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t. With Democrats in charge, Republicans worked loyally during both WWII and the Korean conflict – criticizing Democratic leadership very little. Politicizing war management, opposing critical funding, or aiding and abetting the enemy would have been unthinkable. Elections were different, too. In 1944, Republicans twitted FDR about seeking a fourth term, but GOP candidate Thomas Dewey never mentioned the war except to suggest smaller post-war government. Harry Truman replaced the leftist Henry Wallace on the Democratic ticket because FDR’s death was expected imminently and a Wallace presidency was deemed unacceptable. Republicans said little about it. (Imagine the uproar that would greet such a move today.) Political disputes certainly occurred during the Roosevelt-Truman era, but Republicans helped inject fiscal responsibility into new legislation even when they did not agree with Democrats’ policies. Republicans respected the voters’ choices. Governing was considered a task in which both the majority and minority parties played constructive roles. By contrast, politics are now so polarized and contentious that my descriptions of the past seem incredible. Democrats are willing to sacrifice the nation’s interests just to destroy George W. Bush. They are playing “Russian roulette” with critical issues – obstructing progress on them in hopes that they will blow up on the GOP’s watch. Consider three important items as illustrations. War, terrorism, and national security. Democratic anti-war-ism did not start with Vietnam. In 1864 General George McClellan opposed Abraham Lincoln on a Democratic platform of ending the Civil War with a negotiated settlement. The South would become independent. Although sick of the war, voters wisely rejected the McClellan platform and returned Mr. Lincoln to office. Democrats got us into four 20th-century wars. Vietnam lacked popular support, and bitter enmity between President Lyndon Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy prompted RFK to use national anti-war sentiment as his political vehicle in 1968. By the time Mr. Kennedy was killed (June 5), he was within reach of the Democratic nomination as the anti-war candidate. Democrats became the anti-war party, even though LBJ actually got us into Vietnam. The anti-war wing dominates the modern Democratic Party. JFK could not be a Democrat today, and no Republican president can be allowed to prosecute a war successfully. Many analysts agree that America might not have won earlier (far bloodier) wars under the blizzard of media and political opposition Mr. Bush faces. Democrats repeatedly spin the anti-war roulette cylinder, hoping the Republicans’ war will blow up. Entitlements. Social Security and Medicare are headed for insolvency unless changes are made. Both programs pay benefits from taxes on current workers. Present tax collections exceed payouts, so surpluses are supposedly saved in a “trust fund” for later use. But the Social Security Trust Fund contains only IOUs. Funds have been spent on other parts of the federal budget. Social Security will start calling those IOUs around 2019 when payouts exceed collections. By 2042, the Trust Fund will be empty and the program will register an annual deficit. (Illegal under current law.) Medicare has a similar (but far worse) problem. While Social Security’s 75-year “unfunded liability” is $12.5 trillion, Medicare’s UL will exceed $24 trillion. No serious politician disputes this. Uncorrected, both programs – which resemble overextended pyramid schemes – will crash. When they do, the party that takes the tough actions to reduce benefits and raise taxes will receive a political wound from which it might never recover. For generations Democrats have reaped political benefits for founding these programs. They know correction is needed, but they don’t want to do it. They want Republicans to be the “stuckee” on entitlement reform, and they want that reform limited to reduced benefits and higher taxes that will inflict maximum political damage. This is why Mr. Bush’s attempt to add private accounts to Social Security – which might actually have reduced the system’s unfunded liability and improved benefits for younger workers – had to be shouted down. It would not have produced the GOP-destroying blowup required by the roulette strategy. Energy. Democrats have long advocated higher energy prices – ostensibly so consumers will conserve more. But now that their campaign has succeeded, Democrats seem unhappy. They want to blame someone for $75-a-barrel oil and $3.00-a-gallon gas. Of course, they are merely using high prices to bash George Bush. A glance at Democrats’ record reveals how assiduously they have worked since the 1970s to reduce oil supplies. A new refinery has not been built in 30 years, and extraction of large known reserves of oil in Alaska and off the Florida and California coasts have been opposed with fanatical dedication. Democrats have also worked with environmental groups to block expanded nuclear power production – effectively scaring the country away from this valuable energy source. No new nuclear power plant has opened for a quarter century. Coal – of which we have several thousand years’ supply – has been denounced as a “dirty” fuel, although we now have technology to scrub its emissions. Vilification of these two plentiful energy sources has caused a natural gas crisis in the USA. With nuclear fuel and coal off limits, power plants have been burning gas in huge quantities, causing prices to quadruple in recent months. +++++++ Fulfilling Democrats’ hopes, energy has “blown up” on the GOP’s watch. Mr. Bush gets the blame for high prices. Some analysts say voters will put Democrats back in power in 2006 and 2008. This will be like putting a robber in the bank’s presidency after his robbery ruined it. It will vindicate the roulette strategy completely. Having trashed Mr. Bush’s attempt at constructive Social Security reform, Democrats believe this New Deal relic will be “fixed” at huge political cost to Republicans. Younger voters – who stand to lose the most, as is – could raise enough political hell to get Mr. Bush’s private-accounts implemented. But they seem indifferent to the risk the current system poses to their future. The roulette strategy might blow up to the war on terrorism, too. Terrorists can strike unexpectedly to achieve great damage. Democrats know this, so they are trying to weaken Mr. Bush’s war leadership. If a major terrorist strike occurs, Republicans will be politically ruined. Happy days will be here again for Democrats, even if the country is badly hurt. Oh well.
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