The New GOP: Pricey and Pointless

An excellent analysis of the new Big Government Republican Party.

The New GOP: Pricey and Pointless

By DEROY MURDOCK
Scripps Howard News Service
04-MAY-06

The party of Ronald Reagan has devolved into the party of Lyndon Johnson, George McGovern, Henry Waxman, and Al Gore.

On spending, LBJ's Great Society seems greater than ever....

As Americans for Tax Reform estimates, Republican outlays between 2001 and 2006 have devoured the savings a Democratic White House and GOP Congress generated last decade....

These expenditures include surprisingly generous poverty outlays....

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., flailing as gasoline speeds past the $3.00-per-gallon mark, proposed to send motorists $100 gas rebates. This embarrassment recalled George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign pledge to hand every American a $1,000 "Demogrant."...

On petrochemical policy, the GOP's liberal-Democrat drag show puts the pedal to the metal....

Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., the Laurel and Hardy of Capitol Hill, yanked a page from the playbook of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., when they demanded an inquisition into alleged oil-company profiteering....

Meanwhile, Bush resembles Earth-hugger Al Gore as he proposes hiking automotive fuel-economy standards. This is just what GM needs while it breathes with a respirator. Drivers and passengers also might find it harder to avoid injury in lighter, thinner cars that remain energy-efficient while collapsing more thoroughly in head-on collisions.

How tragic that Ronald Reagan's GOP has become the political equivalent of 1,000 cases of non-alcoholic beer: Pricey and pointless.

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