WHO'S CRYIN NOW?

“Who’s cryin now?”

I think President Lincoln would if he were here, so would John Rusby and Joe Rusby.

Not because we lost the election, oh no! The sadness is for the wasted opportunity!

Let me explain.
About 115 years ago John joined a group with his friends, neighbors and patrons of his small store in what is now Nutley, NJ. That grass roots group was part of a huge group who started a new political party and directed it to do one thing. That one thing was to stop slavery. His grand son, Joe became active in that party, the Republican Party and he worked as a party official organizing and helping wherever he could. I followed and served in elected offices and many volunteer projects.

There have been a number of Republican presidents since Lincoln, actually more than Democrats. But in most cases there was not the control of both houses of congress with the presidency as existed with President Bush.

This was an opportunity that Abe, John, Joe and many other active party members and elected officials would have like to have been a part of. Well, Lincoln did have both houses, so did Teddy Roosevelt and McKinley. Ike had it 25% of his time. Several Democrats had control but Ike was the only Republican in modern times and that was for a short period of his time in office. Gingrich recognized the opportunity and tried to reform the system but he was chastised.

Sure, the president pushed through policies that improved our economy and that is very beneficial. But our congress has missed a wonderful opportunity.
They inserted many special projects into the budget to please their constituency to help get re-elected. Pork barrel.
They continued to negotiate special tax deductions for special groups and accepted campaign assistance and special benefits.
Campaign finance activities continued even though reforms had been introduced. Everyone looked for loopholes.

We have held them in contempt and abandoned them at the polls.

But we stood by and let them do this. Do we have to take some of the blame? We the citizens must insist on a better way to finance campaigns.

Republicans had the chance to make changes. They could have reduced the pork barrel dipping and campaign finance abuses. They could even have done some investigations and started a new way to finance campaigns. They could have even pushed a grass roots program for meaningful tax reform with a bill that was on their desk.

Greed prevented progress. We stood by and did not demand excellence. We let them plod along and satisfy their greed.

It was an opportunity that we trashed. I am sad, I am sure Joe and John and Abe would be disgusted at us for allowing such a rare opportunity to do so much good was wasted.

Totally wasted.