Michael Steele’s new book is being coined as a big mea culpa for the Republican party, but how can they admit their failures when they won’t even admit that they ever happened?
Let me take a few bullet points from the AP’s article on Steele’s book:
-President George H.W. Bush for raising taxes two years after President Ronald Reagan left office, though Steele ignores the fact that Reagan raised taxes too.
Right there the AP admits part of the problem – Steele ignored Reagan’s record also. As matter of fact, just try to tell a Republican that Reagan raised taxes and they will look at you like you just got caught raping a kitten. They refuse to accept history.
-President George W. Bush for not vetoing any spending bills during his first five years in office. He calls Bush and other Republicans “enablers for big government” and derides the Bush administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program as “a massive government slush fund.”
Hindsight is good and all, but Steele was one of those people out there constantly supporting Bush policies. The Bush tax cuts alone were enough to put this country in financial ruins, yet Steele and other Republicans still champion them as the epitome of conservatism. Or how about the highly expensive and totally unnecessary Iraq War? Steele and Republicans never once say that we should have taken a pass on it.
As for the TARP fund, well I seem to remember the Republican candidate for President doing an unprecedented move of suspending his campaign to fight for TARP. Steele wasn’t out blasting that move then, and we are talking about something that happened only a little over a year ago. Redemption doesn’t happen that fast buddy.
-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, for backing censorship of political speech through the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Steele says the GOP erred in allowing itself to be associated with “a national political speech code.”
It’s amazing how you can equate finance reform with censorship. The costs to become a national political figure have become grotesque. It is the number one enabler of creating the new American caste system, where only those with obscene amounts of money can become contenders. Simply put, without McCain-Feingold we would see our system become more corrupt by the big money of special interests. It is a government BY the people FOR the people for a reason.
-Republican lawmakers in general, who allowed spending to rise from 2001 to 2004, went along with TARP and McCain-Feingold, and supported the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit.
Again – not facing reality.The prescription drug benefit wasn’t “supported” by Republicans – it was created by them. That is just a technicality and let’s look past that. It was only a few months ago that Steele was out pushing his platform to “protect” Medicare. Every Republican sold this program as the silver bullet for saving Medicare. Back in 2006, when the program kicked in, Republicans even acted like nothing was wrong as seniors went without life saving medications.
Michael Steele’s points are all good, but I really hope that no one takes them as some sudden awakening. He misses out on many key points and is trying to sell that Pinto with racing stripes as the next Formula One racing car to the American people. It’s a lot easier for Steele to point fingers than to take responsibility, and that is exactly what he is doing.