The Real Positions
Kim du Toit
January 7, 2008
7:00 AM

I watched the so-called “Republican forum” last night on Fox, and let me tell you that and the end of it all, I wouldn’t vote for any of those mealy-mouthed fools. All of them spoke like they had won the nomination, and were appealing to the so-called “center”.

What bollocks.

In case any of the candidates’ campaign people ever bother to read this, allow me to give you a closing speech that will win you the Republican nomination, and probably the Presidency as well.

    My fellow Americans:

    I know that after the Iowa polls, everyone was talking about ‘change’ as though this was some kind of magic word which, at a single stroke, will cure us as a nation of all our ills.

    Well, let me outline the specific areas where I would like to see this ‘change’ , and let me tell you how I’ll make those changes happen.

    1. Low taxes. There seems to be a vague drifting of sentiment towards allowing a tax increase to happen. When I am elected President, I will push for lower, and still lower taxes for the hard-working Americans on whose backs this bloated government rests. I should point out that had any of the Founding Fathers foreseen a tax system which confiscates nearly one third of a man’s hard-earned wages, they might have given up at the start. So let me take that one step further: not only will I push for lower taxes, but I will veto each and every bill which comes my desk which contains even the slightest hint of a tax increase. That is my solemn promise to you.

    2. Health care. Everyone, Republicans included, believes that we are entitled to health care in this country. What they really mean is that everyone should be able to afford health care insurance—and we should. Perhaps if the government took less money away from people in the first place, people would be able to pay for health insurance. We all know that a nationalized health care system is doomed to fail, because that’s happening in every country which has created it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s called a National Health Service or a single-payer system, or universal health care; what it really is, is Government giving out medical treatment—and, in case anyone hasn’t been reading the news from overseas, when Government finds out that it can no longer afford to give out medical treatment to everyone who asks for it, Government then turns around and says, “You can have it, but you’ll have to wait in line” or even worse, “You can’t have it at all, because you belong to a group which we have decided is not worthy to get it.” This has happened, I repeat, in every country where socialized medicine is practiced, and it would be an act of supreme folly to imagine that it would turn out any differently in our country. And speaking of people unworthy to get free medical treatment, let me move to my next point.

    3. Illegal immigration. I will work to reduce federal funding to any state which offers free health care, or free education, to illegal immigrants and their children. I am sick of people crying about the children of illegal immigrants. Let me make myself perfectly clear about this: if a couple gets arrested for robbing a convenience store to feed their family, we do not let them off a prison sentence because their children will lose their parents. It’s a crying shame that children should have to suffer as a result of their parents’ actions, but it is ultimately their parents who caused their woes, by breaking the law. One last thing: A lot of people have talked about how it would be impossible to deport twelve million illegal immigrants. That’s a red herring, because we don’t have to deport twelve million immigrants. What we can do is deport a million a year—and we can certainly do that— while at the same time shoring up our immigration- and border controls to ensure that having been deported, these criminals find it increasingly more difficult to re-cross the border and break the law again. Once illegal immigrants realize that we are serious about expelling them from this country, their desire to try will again be reduced. This has happened in the past, and I will work to make sure that it happens again.

    4. The size of government. The federal government of this country has become too large, too powerful, and too big for its own britches. It has been able to get this way because it collects too much of our money in taxes, and because people have become accustomed to rely on the government to provide for their comfort. Well, as we look around the world today and over the past fifty or so years, the biggest lesson we can learn is that the bigger the government and the more intrusive it is on the business of its citizens, the less successful the country will be, and the more unhappy its citizens. I spoke earlier of my desire to lower our taxes; well, let me spell it out for you.  My goal will be to lower the top income tax rate to 20%—that’s right, twenty percent. There are people who will say that the government cannot survive by taking only one out of every five dollars we earn. Allow me to say two things about that. The first is that every single American knows how to balance what we want, with what we can afford. We would like to buy jewelery, but we know we can’t afford it. Do we therefore buy the diamond necklace anyway, and stop buying groceries for our children? No, we do not: we make do with less—but that’s not the way the federal government works. Perhaps it’s time for the Federal government to start making the same difficult choices that ordinary Americans are forced to make every day—in no small part because the government takes away too much of our money to begin with. The second thing I have to say is that if some government departments find themselves short of money and have to stop working because of no funding, that is one of my goals, too. Which leads me to my fifth point.

    5. Constitutional principles. When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they were extremely careful to limit the power of the Federal government by saying that the government could only do a few specific activities, and no more. Somehow, those few specific activities have grown to encompass government programs that the Founders would never have imagined, in their wildest and most imprudent dreams. So I will work first to curb and then end those expensive and unsustainable programs, to the fullest power with which the Constitution grants the President. It has been said that one of the reasons that the Constitution was so well written was because the authors had the glowering presence of George Washington looking over their shoulders. Let me tell you, I feel that same presence today—and every President should feel that same presence, and govern accordingly.

    6. National security. I spoke earlier of government departments running out of money to function, and of things the Federal government may or may not do. Let me remind everyone of one thing: one of the primary functions of the federal government, not only specified but directed by the Constitution, is to provide for the security of our nation. So do not think that I will allow our Armed Forces to be denied the proper funding to function. Far from it. Our opponents talk about our overwhelming military strength in the world as though it is a bad thing. When they say that, what they are saying is that we, the American people, cannot be trusted to manage that responsibility. Allow me to differ. When a tsunami strikes Southeast Asia, the most welcome sight is not a United Nations fact-finding mission, it is a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter. When one tribe is busy slaughtering another in some forgotten part of the world, the tribesmen would prefer to see American soldiers, rather than Bob Geldof. We are not a totalitarian country; we are not Hitler or Stalin, trying to conquer the world. We are Americans, trying to ensure that this fragile flame of freedom does not flicker and go out. And let me remind everyone that our enemies, especially the Islamic terrorists and the governments which support them, are blowing as hard as they can. My promise to you is that they will never succeed, even slightly, under my watch. We are going to listen to their phone calls and read their emails as they plan to blow up our cities or kill our soldiers; we are going to interrupt their flow of funding, no matter what the source may be. And we are going to pursue them to the ends of the Earth and kill them for the murderers and tyrants that they are, just as we have pursued and punished Nazi killers, and still do to this day.

    In closing, let me say this to you all: our Founding Fathers were rightfully afraid of tyrannical governments, both those from outside our borders and those which may spring from our own population. This is why they limited the power of government, and provided for Americans to change matters when they wanted to, whether through the soap box, the mail box, the ballot box, and, in the final extreme and with extreme reluctance, the cartridge box, just as those few brave souls did at Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts.

    Well, I speak to you now as a candidate for change—the best change, the change which our Constitution demands, and a change back to our Constitution’s original intent: less government in your lives and affairs; lower taxes; the freedom to bear arms, and all the other freedoms as enumerated in our Bill of Rights, which is still the greatest social and political document ever written.

    I will work tirelessly towards that end, because if I do not, I will have betrayed the trust which our Founding Fathers and you, the American people, will have bestowed upon me.

    Thank you, and good night.