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Originally Posted by samcol
Bush is and the Republicans are the worst ever so we MUST elect Democrats in order to survive. I don't buy it for one second. I refuse to vote for either of these two parties on the federal level. For one if Democrats were standing up to half of what Bush has been doing we wouldn't be in this grave situation, and secondly I don't agree with a the liberal ideology anyway. So why should I vote for them regardless of how much I disklike the vast majority of the GOP.
There're are some good Democrats like you say, and good Republicans as well. Al Gore and company aren't going to restore any 'checks and balances' and they are just as corporatly controlled as the other party.
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<b>name</b> a "good" republican....someone who objected vocally in the press and voted agains the huge deficit spending and the secretive, intrusive government policies....or anti consumer bills like "Bankrupcy Reform" and the medicare prescription "benefit" plan. Name someone who represents the majority of working class Americans in his district, or in his state.
Here's one....he's gone....forced out by Hastert and Frist:
Can you <b>name anyone</b> with a similar record who is republican and is still in congress?
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111159,00.html
Retiring Senator Stood Up for Principles
Thursday, February 12, 2004
By Radley Balko
.......Fitzgerald showed some admirable backbone there, too. He was the only senator in the U.S. Congress to vote against the $15 billion airline bailout, despite the fact that United Airlines is based in Illinois and American Airlines has a major hub at O’Hare.
Fitzgerald next earned the wrath of fellow Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a fellow Republican and probably the most powerful politician in Illinois, if not the country. Fitzgerald and Hastert first tangled over Fitzgerald’s refusal to support Hastert’s efforts to secure a glut of federal funding for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, located in Illinois. Hastert pulled rank to secure the money, and Fitzgerald criticized him publicly for it.
Fitzgerald then refused sign a letter written by the Illinois’ congressional delegation to President Bush, which requested the White House’s help in securing federal dollars (read: pork) for the state. Fitzgerald infuriated his colleagues when he wrote in a reply, “the mere fact that a project is located somewhere in Illinois does not mean that it is inherently meritorious and necessarily worthy of support.”
One can only guess that Speaker Hastert’s disgust with Fitzgerald stems from Fitzgerald’s principled refusal to play a game Hastert himself has mastered — wasting taxpayer dollars on needless home-district pork barrel projects. The state of Illinois has 19 congressional districts. According to the Washington Post, Hastert’s district — the 14th — gets a whopping 43 percent of the federal dollars that go to Illinois. This despite that the 14th is one of the richest districts in the state, and is home to just 5 percent of the state’s population. The Post also reports that nearly one-third of that money — about $5 million — will go to Northern Illinois University, where Hastert earned his graduate degree.
Sen. Fitzgerald’s final sin was to nominate someone outside the state of Illinois to serve as U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, based in Chicago. In a 2002 hit piece on Fitzgerald, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Neal scolded, “[t]he junior senator doesn't think that anyone who voted for him is qualified to sit in the U.S. attorney's chair on South Dearborn Street.”
Well, not quite. Instead of rewarding an aspiring local attorney for his political support with the nomination, as is custom in the U.S. Senate, Fitzgerald was more concerned about the ongoing investigation of then-governor and fellow Republican George Ryan, and wanted to be sure an aggressive prosecutor independent of local politics was assigned to the case. So he went out of state and nominated prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), who indicted Ryan on corruption charges last December.............
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Peter Fitzgerald was responsible for putting Patrick Fitzgerald in the position where he could be appointed special counsel to investigate the Plame leak.
One more time...democrats chair no congressional committees. They have no power to call a hearing, subpoena a single witness, or pass a bill out of committee, much less into law. If you voted against all democratic party candidates in 2000, and in 2004, you helped make this happen. If you are a "conservative", what do you support in the current growth of government spending....and the Corporatism today, vs. the unprecedented, slower spending growth and budget surpluses under Clinton's policies? What is it that could be worse under democrats. What harm would restoration on one house of congress, to democratic majority cause? The benefit would be immediate restoration of some checks and balances that do not exist at all today!