Specter, Collins and Snowe: RINOs with a message for Iowa

Now, at long last we are employing a political pejorative here on the pages of TRS. This week Republican Senators Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine) abandoned even the pretext of supporting any Republican principles by crossing the aisle and voting for the regressive socialist spending bill the Democrats have euphemistically described as “stimulus”.

Specter, Collins and Snowe long since abandoned support for Republican social principles; all three routinely vote Democrat on major foreign policy issues and now all three have abandoned the bedrock Republican principles of government restraint and individual empowerment as the engines of economic prosperity. If one doesn’t support any of the principles of our party then isn’t one truly a RINO? If a Republican, in the minority, cannot oppose the economically counterproductive and ideologically collectivist Obama/Pelosi/Reid partisan spending orgy then what part of the Democrat agenda isn’t appetizing?

We here in Iowa cannot do anything about Senators Specter, Collins and Snowe. Hopefully all three will experience an upsurge of confidence in principle and courage of conviction and vote against the OPR spending bill. If not, perhaps it is time we nationally join a campaign to replace them with real Republicans. But that is a fight for another day and place.

What we can, however, do return to basics and hold the line here in Iowa. The Democrats who are presently bankrupting Iowa have so enriched their loyal constituencies in AFSCME, ISEA and the bureaucracies that support such fiscal succubus that state government can no longer meet its core function of paving and maintaining Iowa’s bridges and roads. The only solution that Democrats propose to their complete failure of leadership is more of the same-raise the state gas tax.

Everyone reading these words would be punished by the regressive and confiscatory fuel taxes. The less money you make, the more you suffer-hence the regressive nature of fuel taxes. Iowans cannot avoid driving to work and school and hence have no option but to pay the tax-hence the confiscatory nature of fuel taxes. Iowa lacks a mass transit system and, outside of the Des Moines SMA and the Quad Cities our demographic geography is ill suited for mass transit. Iowa has a small and aging population so development of mass transit in even Iowa’s two relatively compact metropolitan areas. In short, if you are an Iowan over 16 you pay more taxes if the Democrats succeed in raising fuel taxes.

We, as Republicans, surely can do better. Let the Democrats be the party of old European style socialism, taxing, spending and collectivizing their way to the egalitarianism of poverty; we should be the party of new thinking. Is it not time Republican asked the voters this simple, if verbose, question: why can’t we take existing money from a state spending program that has failed to solve whatever problem it was designed to solve or, at best, benefits the few and instead spend the same money on something that benefits everyone-safe, modern and well maintained bridges and roads?

So here’s a challenge for our Republican legislators. Rather than vote for a gas tax increase when the gas tax vote hits the floor of either house, every Republican legislator should sponsor a budget cut that, when taken together, provide sufficient savings to fund a 21st Century infrastructure network. Give the voters a choice and make the Republican option open and notorious. And then, in 2010, we ask the voters if they prefer regressive tax increases and irrational across the board budget cuts or the application of real leadership that really solves problems.