The President and Vice-President will both be speaking at the GOP Convention next month. So will Rudy and yet another Democrat. Give you one guess who that is:
The Arizona senator is turning to close allies, former rivals, a former Democrat, and potential running mates to address the convention in the days leading up to his acceptance speech. A year ago, four of the speakers were competing against McCain for the Republican nomination; one of the speakers is Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee; two of them represent the battleground state of Florida, and 10 speakers have been rumored to be on McCain’s list of potential running mates.
Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said that the senator wanted the list of speakers to showcase the “diversity†of the Republican Party.
That’s nice. That’s what we need in the Republican Party. We need diversity. We need to be all things to all people.
Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate.
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Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?
Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.
Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.
Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.
And let it provide indexing—adjusting the brackets to the cost of living—so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.
Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.
Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.
Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.
Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.
And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.â€
We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.
A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.
McCain is a true Reagan Republican. And I think clowns and tornadoes are really cool.
