Curmudgeon's Corner

Something Afoot...

Posted by Al Campbell on Jan. 9, 2010

Political, U.S., Wisconsin

According to Scott Rasmussen, there is something afoot in America.  He reports today that 75% of Republican voters believe the Republicans in Congress are "out of touch" with them.  By that, they mean that Republicans in Congress are more liberal than they feel they, the voters, are in their political belief systems.

This ties in with a decided bent toward conservatism across America and makes me wonder if we are in the midst of a sea change in the political base on the right side of the aisle.  I suspect that we may be; this has been a long time coming and it might just have arrived at this point.

I have made no bones about having dropped my membership in the Republican party because it was not representing me as I wanted to be represented.  I am a conservative and I am unrepresented by either of the predominant political parties.  I am not Libertarian; I am conservative.  I am conservative in both my fiscal views as well as in my social views.  There are some commenters to this Blog that believe if I suggest a few pennies in increased tax rates, I am not a fiscal conservative, but I beg to differ.  Even a fiscal conservative can understand that there is sometimes a need to raise a bit more money for local needs.

We, admittedly, find ourselves living in the midst of one of the most conservative areas in Wisconsin.  Maybe that is clouding my thinking; I don't think so, but it could be.  I really believe that there is a decided conservative movement finally beginning to assert itself.  There are young, influential Republicans in Congress who are beginning to make their presence felt.  Our own Paul Ryan is among them.  There are a handful in the state legislature, but no where near enough to begin an evolution that becomes a revolution.

The race for governor could help to shape a more conservative Wisconsin if Scott Walker or Mark Neumann are elected.  Of the two, I think Walker is the more conservative and I frankly hope he is the Republican candidate following the primaries.  

One of the commenters who is a regular to this Blog demonstrates what is wrong, from my point-of-view, with liberal thinking.  He professes to believe that liberals are the engines of the economy when the reality I see is an ever greater number of government jobs as the result.  Governments do nothing to stimulate economies since governments take from economies rather than contribute to economies.  We need only look at the "stimulus" package to see that the sole area it stimulated was government-sector employment and it used our dollars to do that.

We are now sitting atop a time-bomb known as health care reform.  It has the potential to mire our country in an economic downturn for many years since it confiscates so much more money to  accomplish little.  On top of miring the economy in a downturn, it does nothing of substance to solve the problems we have with health care.  This is a classic government approach that will help grow government while doing little of a positive nature for health care.

We just read the reports that another 85,000 jobs disappeared from our economy, while the unemployment percentage stayed at 10%.  The under-employed percentage, however, continues to grow toward the 20% level.  Our government would prefer that we pay no attention to those who are under-employed since that presents a story they'd just as soon we not understand.

We may not have degrees in Economics but we do understand what is happening.  We do understand that a government job takes money from us since we are the people who give government the money that it spends.  We understand that government workers see a rosy economy while those of us who pay them do not have that same point-of-view.

That leads me to another pet peeve; we need to have term limits, pure and simple.  The people who get re-elected to a second congressional term are virtually assured of a lifelong career in Washington. They lose all sense of reality when they are in Washington.  There is no other rational explanation for the stupid things that come from Washington.  Steve Kagen, if re-elected this year, can skate the rest of his political career; the chances that he'll later be removed from office would only exist if he were caught philandering or skimming money...and even that might not result in his being 'fired'.

Mark Neumann has a good idea when he says that all candidates should be limited to a total of 12 years in a particular office.  Looking at the state of our state, that was too long for Governor Doyle and probably too long for Tommy Thompson, as well.

There seems to be something afoot and it has a conservative face about it.  I can hardly wait for it to materialize and become reality.