Ken Mehlman, Chairman

Republican National Committee

Dear Ken,

In your letter requesting funds, you asked if I have abandoned the Republican Party.  As I ponder that question, I must reluctantly answer yes – until the Republican Party starts acting like… well, like Republicans.

The current President, rumored to be a Republican, has the luxury of both a Republican House and a Republican Senate.  Yet this combination has provided our country with the following:

·       Federal spending that is totally out of control.  In President Bush’s first term alone, Government spending increased by 33%, jumping from 18.5% to 20.3%.of GDP. 

Republicans have out “LBJed” LBJ.  While Lyndon B. Johnson boosted discretionary spending by 33% to finance his “Great Society”, Republicans have managed a 45% increase in the last five years!

·       One big contributor is earmarks.  In 1987, President Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because it contained 152 earmarks.  In 2005, President signed a transportation bill that had 6,370 earmarks.  To date, the Republicans have passed, and the President has signed, over 15,000 earmarks.  Each and every one of these earmarks is a slap in the face of the American taxpayer, and adds to shamefully wasteful government spending.

This is what former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay called a “bare-bones” budget!

·       A massive Medicare drug benefit which threatens to dwarf the Social Security crisis.  This new $17 trillion entitlement – the single largest entitlement in American history – was passed by Republicans in an attempt to buy votes.  During the Clinton years, my Republican party told us that government wasn’t the answer to our country’s health-care problems.  Who are these people in Congress, and what have they done with the real Republicans?

·       President Bush’s vague “plan” to save Social Security.  I say vague, because all he told us about it was some kind of personal accounts funded by some small percentage of our own money.  Then, after months of agree-with-me-and-I’ll-tell-you-what-you-agreed-to-later pleading, he comes out with “means testing”.  So now – in addition to being taken for a ride by a governmental ponzi scheme – it seems the harder we work and the more we earn, the less of our own money this Republican President wants to “give” back to us.  When this went over like a lead balloon, Republicans dropped Social Security reform completely.

·       The “No Child Left Behind Act”.  A Federal Government control of education that some states are refusing to follow – even at the loss of federal dollars.  Competition, parental choice, and the resulting innovation at the local level is the key to education reform.  Not another expensive federal mandate written by Ted Kennedy.

·       In spite of the fact that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers were Muslim men between the ages of 16 and 35, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) thinks it is more politically correct to body-search all passengers – less we should make Muslim men between the ages of 16 and 35 feel uncomfortable if subjected to a little extra scrutiny.  Former TSA Secretary Norm Mineta explained that “We must protect the civil rights of airline passengers.”  If I donate to the RNC, will Republican President Bush tell the TSA they should be more concerned with protecting the lives of airline passengers?  Profiling helps stop terrorists.  Treating everybody equally helps waste limited resources.

·       Porous boarders.  Five years after 9/11, we still have no control over our illegal alien problem.  Heck, we can’t even call a spade a spade – we have to refer to them as “undocumented workers”.

When American citizens – fed up with the Government’s inaction – took on the task of monitoring 22 miles of the Arizona border with Mexico for a month, President Bush called them “vigilantes” – even before they took up their positions.

Just last month – after an avalanche of protests by the American public, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the end of “catch-and-release”.  (Perhaps he was motivated by the discarded jackets bearing military patches in Arabic found by Texas law enforcement officials along the Rio Grande River.)  This was four years and eleven months too late.

·       The 2001 steel tariff.  By the time it was removed a year and a half later, this action cost more jobs than it saved – and lost more votes than it bought.  (When was the last time we heard a Republican politician advocate eliminating the heavy tariffs on lumber, sugar, and brassieres that American consumers have to support?)

·       Restrictions on Freedom of Speech.  When Republican President Bush signed the McCain-Feingold “Protect-Incumbents-By-Restricting-Campaign-Finance” Bill in 2002, he told us he thought these restrictions on Free Speech were unconstitutional – but he signed it anyway. (Whose hand was on the Bible when he swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”?)

Those Republicans who signed the “contract with America” knew – and apparently today’s Republicans do not -- that any law restricting American citizens from voicing our support for, or displeasure with, candidates for public office is an attack on our freedom of speech.

·       Just last month, in an attempt at political slight-of-hand, Republicans in both houses voted for a bill raising the minimum wage.  At the same time they acknowledged that if passed, this bill would raise the unemployment rate of the poorest Americans.  Did we buy any votes with that one?

What has happened to the Republican Party I joined in 1966?  Back then, we stood for less government and more individual responsibility.  Now, after twelve years in power, Republicans have replaced big government with super-sized government and accountability with a government handout!

I have donated generously to the Republican Party in the past.  But I’m beginning to think I should have hidden that money under my “personal retirement mattress” instead. 

Sincerely,

A Freeborn American

P.S.  Contact me again when you start behaving like Republicans.