Election 2008: The Next President (Part 2 of 3)

…of Nikitas3.com

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

On the economy, we certainly have worldwide competition that is making the 1950s look like a pleasant dream, which they were. During that decade, America was producing 50% of the world’s finished goods because Japan and Europe were destroyed. Today our total is said to be 25%, and jobs are rapidly disappearing in some parts of the nation, particularly in the Northern Tier from Michigan to Maine. To fight back, we must speak out against unfair practices by China, but we do not need wholesale protectionism against imports as the Democrats will propose at the urging of their Big Labor funders.”

On the economy, we certainly have worldwide competition that is making the 1950s look like a pleasant dream, which they were. During that decade, America was producing 50% of the world’s finished goods because Japan and Europe were destroyed. Today our total is said to be 25%, and jobs are rapidly disappearing in some parts of the nation, particularly in the Northern Tier from Michigan to Maine. To fight back, we must speak out against unfair practices by China, but we do not need wholesale protectionism against imports as the Democrats will propose at the urging of their Big Labor funders.

What we must do is to nurture domestic business and entrepreneurship with conservative tax policies that will allow free enterprise to develop and prosper. Yet again, here in Massachusetts the coercive Democrat state is using ham-handed tax politics to crush any opportunity for growth, and the faltering economy is a typical leftist basket case.

But the bigger problem is the Democrats’ refusal to even acknowledge that the Bush tax cuts indeed are stoking the economy (4.9% GDP growth in the third quarter!) and that there remains a lot of American prosperity, mostly in the Southern and Western states – the conservative states that historically have voted Republican. As Dems fight to increase taxes and regulation, however, and to use business as their personal piggy bank, we conservatives need to re-state our obvious belief in tax-cut economics.

And on Social Security, we see the Democrats blocking any reform at all. President Bush’s truly earnest attempt at reform was killed by the Dems because they want no reduction at all in the flow of money into the SS coffers, so that they themselves can control the people through that huge pot of cash. This will lead us to disaster, and to huge SS tax increases on our children and grandchildren.

So indeed, 2008 will be a watershed year, much like the election of 1980 when we were offered the opportunity to stick with Jimmy Carter’s weak, vacillating status quo or to boldly step into the future with Ronald Reagan’s vision for change and challenge. We made the correct choice and Reagan transformed America profoundly, and the world too, by revitalizing our economy through big tax reductions and then staring down the Soviet Union to end the Cold War, despite the protestations of millions against Reagan’s tough tactics.

Today, we face new international realities. Islamic terrorism has replaced Soviet communism as our threat, and in a way, it is less and it is more. Indeed individual groups of terrorists are nothing like the nightmare of Soviet brigades moving across Europe. But then again there are terrorists who wish to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York City, something the Soviets would not have dreamed of for fear of retaliation. But terrorists believe that perhaps they can get away with such an action by dint of the fact that their activity might be untraceable, and that their guerilla style of individual “cell” warfare would offer them the final means to devastate our economy. The recent turmoil in nuclear-armed Pakistan should give every American pause.

And we need a President to deal with this threat in a real way, not with talk. If Hillary cannot even admit her position on drivers’ licenses for illegals or talk straight about what she believes about Iraq, how can we expect her to make life-and-death decisions in foreign policy? We must confront terrorism as Bush is doing. When we finally declare Iraq free and democratic, it will be a huge blow to Islamic fascism because the terrorists will have lost in the showcase on which they met Bush eyeball to eyeball.

Despite the difficulty of the task there and the tragic loss of thousands of American lives, Iraq will, in the long run, be seen as the crucial turning point in the war on terror where we defeated the enemy on their own turf in order to prevent them from reaching ours. The metaphorical import of such a defeat never should be understated, although the anti-Bush media will do their best to do so. The pacifist left never will fight this type of pre-emptive war, and thus, like those who protested Reagan’s peace-through-strength agenda, it never will in the long run be able to squash terrorist fascism but will settle for coexistence. And we know that that means decades of confrontation and low-level conflict.

In health care, we do not need the promise of government takeover as in Hillary Care. This always is the simplistic socialist approach to everything. What we need to do is to revamp and strengthen the private system by getting the lawyers out (opposed by liberals, because the trial lawyers are their allies and fundraisers); by moving back to the 1990s HMO model (opposed by liberals because everybody did not get every last treatment, which was exactly the point. Costs were reigned in substantially during that time); by restraining the cost-of-living raises generously granted to health-care industry labor unions (opposed by the big-labor left); and by finding a better solution for lower-cost procedures than the current insurance system, which requires far too much paperwork.

And finally, we must encourage the elderly to see our health system as the best in the world, but one that cannot accommodate every last ache and pain. The elderly must be thankful for the long and healthy lives that we live in America today. But the socialists among us will urge the elderly to declare themselves as victims and to complain loudly in order to keep pressure on the private system and ultimately to push it toward government control.

Liberals love to theorize about clean energy, a world without war, and a nation with “free” health care. But nothing is free, and these are just pipe dreams and will lead us in the wrong direction. We need hard action to deal with our challenges, and none of the Democrat candidates for President have any intention of rolling up their sleeves to address these problems because that is not the liberal way. They will take only a “passive” and intellectual approach, i.e., let’s NOT build nuclear power plants (it’s too much work), let’s NOT do the hard work of reforming Social Security (it’s too uncertain), let’s NOT confront terrorists (it’s too scary), let’s NOT reform the health system (it’s too complicated). Let’s just go the “passive” way and hope for the political best.

But as Ronald Reagan proved, the “active” way, with hard choices made, will produce the best result over the long run, just as he confronted Soviet tyranny with muscle and power and a steely resolve, not with wallflower negotiations and acquiescence.