Recently, a letter was written to the Times-Union regarding the upcoming midterm elections. And from reading the letter you can see the GOP strategy unfolding right before your eyes.
The letter begins by enlightening us on the problems with one-party rule. The writer states, "Any time one party is in control of all three houses of government, freedoms erode for each one of us. The government loses its checking (or preventing) power and the force of the party in power overcomes the will of the people." But this explanation of checks and balances is wrong. The checks and balances works among the three branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. It does not cover three houses of government. The control by one party of three houses of government, as explained by the writer, only covers two of those branches.
Now I usually tend to agree with this argument. But when it comes from a conservative in Democratic/Libertarian clothing I must smile because it is yet another example of the GOP/Conservative hypocrisy. It's ironic that the GOP/Conservatives talk about tyranny and Totalitarianism when the last time there was total one-party rule in this country it happened on their watch. In fact, currently, under the Obama administration, the system of checks and balances that the writer is so worried about is actually more in place now than it was under President Bush. But as I have stated before, this is just more of the GOP "do as I say not as I do" campaign strategy.
But if conservatives truly believe that the system of checks and balances is so sacred, then where was their outrage during the Bush administration? Where was the outrage when Republican President George W. Bush, the Republican Senate, the Republican House of Representatives, and a conservative Supreme Court were in charge? That's right, between 2001 and 2006, the GOP controlled The White House, the Congress and conservatives controlled the Supreme Court. That's all three branches folks. Where were the cries of tyranny then?
Where was the conservative outrage when the GOP controlled all three branches of government and then forced laws down the throats of the American people?
One such law was the Patriot Act, which was the largest attack on our civil liberties in modern history. Under the one-party rule of the GOP, this country was rushed into a war of choice in Iraq when we had not finished the job in Afghanistan. Where was the conservative outrage when the one party rule of the GOP ran the economy into the ground? And where were the cries of Socialism when the one-party rule of the GOP passed the Bush tax cut, which was one of the largest redistributions of wealth in our country's history and is now the largest structural part of the deficit? There was none.
But now the GOP/Conservative hypocrites will come out of the woodwork, revise history, and ask you to "Remember November", but what they really want is for you to forget what they did the last time they were in charge.
