Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Republicans not who they think they are
By Paul Williamson
Daily Toreador, Texas Tech
March 26, 2009

I am a conservative and therefore republican, right? Not so fast!

In the eight years of George W. Bush, we saw an expansion of government that would have made our Founding Fathers want to be British. And Republicans gave rubber-stamp approval for it all.

This is why there is no longer a connection between being a Conservative and Republican. Conservatives are supposed to believe in limited government. It is the number one thing they tout during the Republican presidential debates especially on issues like health care.

If Republicans believe in limited government, then the world is flat, Michael Moore voted for George W. Bush, and Mike Leach believes in a well-balanced offense.

After September 11, 2001, America was changed forever. Not only on a foreign policy front, but domestic policy as well. Our Constitution was thrown aside out of fear and government control expanded to a point not seen since World War II Japanese internment camps. The Patriot Act allowed it all. Everything from "sneak and peak" searches to destruction of privacy in our financial records, the Patriot Act was just the beginning of a long list of actions by the GOP to expand government control.

NSA wiretapping was a gross overexpansion of government power. The National Security Agency was allowed to tap phones across the United States without warrant or any form of judicial approval. Despite a court ruling saying otherwise, Alberto Gonzalez, former attorney general, said, "We also believe very strongly that the program is lawful." He also tried to defend the program by saying it is "reviewed periodically" to ensure lawfulness. Hey, at least he has memory of something.

Oh no, wait a minute! What about all of those terrorists who are hiding under our beds at night? Don't we need to protect ourselves from them? After all, there has not been a terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.

How we forget the anthrax scares and the Beltway Snipers. How about our allies? Al-Qaeda operatives took blame for the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004. It is absurd to believe these policies kept the America safe. If it truly is a global war on terrorism and our allies are getting attack by the groups we supposedly getting information from, then the 191 people who died that day need an explanation about what information they are getting.

Even if they did make us safer, at what price? If terrorists supposedly hate our way of life and hate democracy, why do we destroy it for them?

It isn't just the Global War on Terror where we see a massive expansion of government power by the Republicans.

We saw a massive increase in runaway spending by the Republican-controlled Congress in the 2000s. Even Fox News was kind enough to point this out in an April 9, 2002 article. "A war and a recession did not stop Congress from doling out the pork for special hometown projects," the report stated.

The GOP spent the entire election campaign criticizing the big spending of the Democrats and how they want to overwork the taxpayer. The GOP set records in earmark spending with a highway bill in 2005 where there was $24 billion in pork with more than 6,000 pet projects.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush painted Vice President Al Gore as a big-government, big-spending Democrat. But under his watch, government spending grew out of control and the Republican Party became the other big government party.

In social policy, Republicans rank very low when it comes to government control in our private lives. This is especially true in their stances on same-sex marriage. Many Republicans are in favor a Constitutional amendment to gay marriage.

Talk about government control. The GOP wants the government to tell people who they can and cannot marry. Who they can and cannot love. How can a party be so against governmental control when it comes to health care but be so for it when it comes to discriminating against an entire group of people?

I am a limited government Conservative. Not a Republican. There is a difference.

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