Kevin Tracy

When I first became a Republican in 2000, I believed that Republicans were simply better than Democrats.  I believed that Republicans held themselves up to higher moral, ethical, and intellectual standards than did Democrats.  Over the past 12 years, I’ve been proven horribly wrong.

Even though I’m still a Republican and a conservative doesn’t mean I have to like it. As many of you know, I still hold my candidates, elected officials, and fellow Republicans to that higher standard; which I still believe in.  As a result, there are a lot of people who hate my guts, think of me as a traitor, and who will not speak a word to me.  But hey, that makes it all the easier to differentiate between friends and people using you.

As time has gone by, I’ve found the most important value in political discourse is intellectual honesty.  And if you believe in capitalism, it’s the most valuable value because it’s probably the scarcest value commodity out there.  People are far too willing to say or do anything in order to get elected and, not surprisingly, it creates a lack of trust between the people and their candidates and elected officials.

Here’s a really good example of the kind of rhetoric that’s coming from the Republican side right now.

This is now circulating around Facebook like wildfire.  You’re probably going to see all of this information on T-Shirts and in radio and television GOP campaign ads coming up, too.  These are all great 30 second talking points that point to failures of the government under the Obama Administration.

But let’s go through these point by point.

1. OBAMA LOST OUR AAA CREDIT RATING

That’s misleading. Was the AAA credit rating of the United States downgraded to a AA credit rating?  Yes.  That is a fact and there is no denying it.  However, it was pretty well documented that the United States lost its AAA credit rating because the United States Congress (and Republicans in particular) threw a huge fit over raising our debt ceiling.  Keep in mind that if the debt ceiling was not increased, the US would have defaulted.  Ask Greece and Spain how much fun that process is.  Instead, our debt ceiling was raised, we met our financial obligations, and a AA credit rating really isn’t all that bad.  Has any American REALLY been impacted by this?  Unless you are a political pundit who got paid to be on television or radio station to spin the news, the answer is “no.”

2. UNEMPLOYMENT IS UP UNDER OBAMA 

Misleading, though also true.  Unemployment is up under President Obama.  Again, the numbers don’t lie.  In fact, I would argue that unemployment is up even higher than this because so many people failed to find work before their unemployment benefits pooped out.  However, the 7.8% unemployment at the end of the Bush Administration was actually higher than it was at the end of the Clinton Administration.  In fact, the net unemployment increase was a lot higher under President Bush than President Obama (using these figures alone, but Bush also had 8 years to do it in).

Plus, there is something to be said about momentum.  In 2000, the economy was beginning to tank under President Clinton, but it really didn’t hit until after President Bush took office and the nation suffered the Enron fallout followed shortly by the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  Republicans were screaming that it wasn’t Bush’s fault because the policies that allowed Enron to get away with their shenanigans were Clinton policies.  Likewise, as Michael Moore and Clinton’s biographers would rather you forget, President Bill Clinton passed on the opportunity to grab Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks were even being conceived.  Most of the planning for 9/11 actually took place under the Clinton-era, too.  I’m NOT blaming Clinton for 9/11; but merely saying the full load of the responsibility for not stopping it doesn’t rest entirely on the shoulders of President George W. Bush.

Similarly, poor state of the economy doesn’t rest entirely on the shoulders of President Obama, either.  He did inheret this economy.

Granted, he hasn’t done squat to make it better.  If you’re going to criticize Obama on this point, that’s where and how you should hit him.

3. GAS PRICES HAVE GONE UP UNDER OBAMA

Lie.  Was the average price of gas the day President Bush left office $1.81 a gallon?  Yes.  Was gas exceeding $4.00 just a few months before that?  Yes.

Here’s the MSPaint Comic from May 1, 2006 to shamelessly promote my upcoming graphic novel The MSPaint Comic: Volume 1 and to hopefully prove to you non-believers that soaring gas prices were a constant issue during the Bush Administration. (click on it to view the full size image)

To tell you the truth, I have no economic explanations to offer for why gas prices were down to around $1.81 a gallon when Bush was leaving office.  President Bush did nothing to alleviate the pain at the pump (besides what happened in the above comic).  Arguably, you can say that gas prices fell because so many people lost their jobs and were no longer commuting to work, creating a gas surplus for a very limited demand.  Still, with fewer people working now than back in 2008 and early 2009 (mixed with more fuel efficient vehicles on the road), gas prices should have stayed low by that logic.

As much as I hate conspiracies, it is difficult not to notice that prices fell as soon as it became obvious that Senator Obama was going to become President Obama and he was taking about reforming how the oil market works.  With lower prices, it was not worth the fight.  Then the Republicans won the House of Representatives, Obama’s ability to do anything went out the window, and gas prices went back up.  Again, it’s probably just a coincidence.

4. OBAMA GREW THE DEFICIT BY $5+ TRILLION!

Okay, this is true.  But let’s go back to the downgrading of our nation’s credit rating.  What difference does it make?  The truth of the matter is that the United States is exactly what a lot of  Republicans say that they hate… “Too Big To Fail.”

We like to talk about how “our children are going to be stuck with the bill.”  Wrong.  The truth of the matter is that our government has no intention of paying back this debt.  Our children won’t pay for it.  Their children won’t pay for it.  The United States of America won’t pay back this debt.

Then where will it go?  That’s simple.  It’s going to go where it’s going right now.  China and the rest of the world are going to eat our debt.  Did you see what happened when the US housing bubble burst?  The entire first world economy shattered almost overnight.  China was sparred because their economy is a manipulated farce.  Russia got through pretty much unscathed because so little of their economy depends on a stock exchange and foreign banks; which means they were partially unaffected by the collapse of financial institutions around the world.  Everybody else got screwed.

Now, imagine the financial crisis of 2008-present multiplied by a thousand and you’ll get an idea of what would happen if the world suddenly wouldn’t take any more of the United States’ debt.  We’re literally too big to fail.  Even China wouldn’t be able to escape the tsunami a US economic collapse of that magnitude would create.

I’m by no means in favor of pushing the debt higher, though.  The simple fact of the matter is that the current rate at which we are spending money is unnatural, even for Washington, DC.  Plus, it creates an unhealthy strain on the global economy; which has traditionally resulted in regional and global conflicts to resolve the debts.

That’s a nice segway into…

5. OBAMA’S THREE WARS VS. BUSH’S TWO WARS

I don’t really understand what they’re counting here.  Bush obviously got us into Afghanistan and Iraq.  Does Obama’s three wars include these and Libya?  Obama was a lowly Illinois State Senator skipping votes when President Bush started two of the wars being attributed to Obama by this rhetoric.

Plus, aren’t we ignoring Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines?  I’m not sure what logic is being used to come up with this talking point, but it seems obvious that it’s flawed by ignorance of world events and the greater Global War on Terrorism.

This is what happens when you let your Ron Pauler friends make a talking point for you.

6. OBAMA INCREASED UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS TO 99 WEEKS

Lie.  While it was at 99 weeks a few months ago, unemployment benefits are down to 89 weeks right now and scheduled to drop to 73 weeks by the end of the year.  Still, that’s more than double what it was before.

We should probably examine the necessity of this, though.  It is REALLY hard to find a job right now.  I’m an Air Force veteran with both government and private sector experience who graduated with a degree from Purdue with a 4.0 GPA and the job I have right now doesn’t utilize one skill I learned in the Air Force, my professional background, or college.  A technical skill I learned in high school got my foot in the door.

It took me 28 weeks to find a job with my credentials and leadership experience; which most Americans don’t have.  I can very easily see how it would take 73 to 99 weeks of aggressive job hunting to find a new job after being laid off.

The problem isn’t that unemployment benefits last 89 weeks.  The problem is that it takes that long to maybe find a job that pays better than unemployment.  That is the problem we need to be hammering Obama on, not the benefit that has saved millions of people the pain of foreclosing on their home and filing bankruptcy.

FYI: I have been unemployed for four stretches of my life.  I have never taken or even applied for unemployment.

7. NO BUDGETS WITH OBAMA

False.  President Obama has regularly proposed budgets.  Here’s the White House’s 2013 budget proposal.  The problem isn’t that Obama doesn’t want a budget, the problem is that he’s not putting pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get a budget on the Senate floor.  Will Republicans tear it apart blindly like hungry hungry bureaucratic hippos?  Of course!   But so what?  You’re expected to show leadership when you’re the President and Obama has failed to demonstrate that ability within his own party, let alone across party lines.

Perhaps now you get a better idea of why some people don’t like me.  I won’t attack a progressive liberal for the sake of attacking a progressive liberal, or as is often the case, for the sake of diverting attention away from something a Republican is doing.  How that serves our Constitution, the people, or our way of life is completely beyond me.  I expect Democrats to lie, cheat, and steal.  Since recognizing myself as one, I have always expected more from Republicans.

As a political party, we have to stand for something.  If that something is nothing more than electing people with (R)’s after their names instead of (D)’s, then why should anyone stand with us?  If we’re serious about serving our communities, states, country, and even the world, then we’re going to have to start holding ourselves accountable.  Covering up our fellow Republicans mistakes until the media catches wind and then diverting attention by attacking Democrats for something that happened 30 years ago isn’t serving anything but ourselves.

And that’s not why I’m a Republican.