Republican hypocrisy

The main reason I loathe the Republicans so much is not because I don't believe in what they stand for. I do. If the Republicans actually followed their rhetoric I might be a Republican myself. But they don't.

The Republicans say they stand for fiscal conservatism, but every time there's a Republican in the White House the budget deficit goes up. Every time there's a Democrat in the White House the deficit goes down. It's really quite striking how good the correlation is. Take a look a the graph on this page. In 1980, Jimmy Carter lost the White House to Ronald Reagan. The budget deficit immedately shot up and remained high through the first Bush administration. Then in 1992 Bill Clinton took over and the deficit went down every single year for eight straight years. Then in 2000 Dubya took over and in three short years drove the budget back into deficit by amounts that dwarfed any of his predecessors. (Some say that Clinton's deficits went down because he had a Republican Congress and that Reagan's and Bush's went up because they had a Democratic Congress, but the last three years refutes that theory, to say nothing of the fact that deficits were going down during the first two years of the Clinton administration, when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.)

The Republicans say they stand for individual freedom and responsibility, but then they want to outlaw abortion and doctor assisted suicide (to say nothing of allowing the state to force-feed people in a persistent vegitative state against the wishes of their immedaite family). They say they stand for Democracy, but then they send John Ashcroft to Oregon to overturn a popular initiative permitting doctor assisted suicide that was passed not once but twice, and to California to overturn a popular initiative permitting the medical use of marijuana. The Republicans say they stand for Democracy, but in their actions they continually reveal their utter contempt for it.

The Republicans say they stand for small government, but then they pass the Patriot Act, and bring us closer to being a totalitarian state than at any time in our history.

The Republicans, at least as represented by their current leadership, are, in short, hypocrites, idealogical wolves in conservative sheep's clothing. This is not to say that the Democrats are saints; they aren't. I could probably write a good rant about them too, but they are not at the moment a clear and present danger to freedom and democracy. The Republicans are.