On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Gruss wrote: > > Meghan McCain. The only Republican with a vision to chart the future > and the courage to blow up the failed past: > > "old school Republicans are scared shitless" > > "I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes ...There > are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by > being 'more' conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win > by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just > want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I > think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is > not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is > between the future and the past."
She has a great point. Democrats have already gone through this process; Barack Obama emerged as the leader of the party because of it. Republicans are stuck with old leaders and old ideas. Here is my list of new ideas for the Republican Party: - Support gay marriage. It is an individual rights issue and it is shameful that Republicans don't support it. - Admit the war on drugs is an abject failure and find a new way forward. I don't think outright legalization will work, but certainly decriminalization is part of the solution. Twenty years ago people were saying that drug abuse is a medical issue; that is still true today. - Give up trying to outlaw abortion. Reasonable people disagree about the issue, which to me means that we need to allow people to make their own choices based on their beliefs, not our own. - Support the growth of the House of Representatives back to something closer to what the Founders intended. 1:30,000 sounds good to me, that would mean I could drive a few miles down the road and visit my Rep's office, and he/she might actually have time to see me and listen to my concerns. We have strayed far from the Founders' intentions of local government, local control. We need to get back to it. - Fight bureaucracy. Republicans should fight to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and move to a system more like the ones modern corporations employ, with fewer permanent positions and many more contracting opportunities within the government. This change will only work if we vastly expand the size of the House otherwise it will just end up as a system for a handful of Reps to feed federal contracts to their favorites. We still need a federal workforce, but what we have today is a mess. - Support serious re-structuring of the tax code. Flat tax, fair tax, VAT, I don't know what a good solution is, but everyone agrees that the current system is broken. - Immigration. Stop the insanity of trying to militarize the border to fight a war on drugs that has failed. Support Mexico in reforming their economy. Until Mexico works better for the average Mexican, this will continue to be a problem. - Entitlement reform. The problems are so huge and so obvious that it is an embarrassment we have not managed to do this already. Every member of Congress should be ashamed of themselves. - Health care. Tied in with entitlement reform. We should focus on childhood and preventative care, instead of on care for the last three months of a person's life, which is where altogether too much money goes today. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:295437 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
