Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Bob Barr points out that John McCain and his Republican supporters need to be careful about using the world socialist:
Sen. John McCain accuses Sen. Barack Obama of being a “socialist,” but it is President George W. Bush, supported by Sen. McCain, who has done the most to socialize the U.S. economy. Courtesy of the Republican Party, the federal government is set to own a sizeable chunk of the housing, auto, banking and insurance industries, as well as pieces of individual companies lining up to sell securities to Washington. Even individual homes, with Uncle Sam preparing to become the mortgage guarantor of last resort, are the targets of nationalization.
What will be left for the next president to socialize?
The Republican Party once campaigned against irresponsible federal spending and government red ink. Then George W. Bush became president. With a Republican Congress, he turned a budget surplus into a half trillion dollar deficit, added trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities with creation of the Medicare drug benefit, and expanded virtually every federal program, domestic as well as foreign.
How is this different from what the Democratic Party has been promising to do for years?
The answer, of course, is that it isn’t, and that is why all this effort to pin the socialist label on Barack Obama while at the same time claiming that the GOP is the defender of free markets and capitalism is just so totally laughable.
The Republican Party Platform may talk about free markets, low taxes, low spending, and less government regulation, but the past eight years have shown that when the GOP was actually given a chance to put those ideas into action it not only failed to do so, but increased the size of government at a peace unequalled since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Barr goes on to point out a truth that anyone who believes in what the GOP claims to believe in should think about before actually casting that vote for John McCain in eight days:
Is Sen. Obama “socialist?” Yes, he wants to “spread the wealth,” as he puts it. But that’s what the Republicans have been doing for the last eight years. We already have “big government,” “socialism,” or whatever else you want to call it—and it was Republicans who gave it to us.
Even if he was elected, Sen. McCain would continue to this drive to bigger and bigger government: He has proposed that the federal government spend $300 billion to buy every bad mortgage in America. But, he isn’t going to win.
The real alternative this election is Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party. Only a vote for Bob Barr will tell Washington that there are Americans who don’t want socialism, whether from the Democrats or the Republicans. Only Bob Barr represents real change in Washington.
At the very least, it will send a message to the Republican Party that talking about freedom while governing in a way that destroys it isn’t going to work anymore.
