I

 read with interest Bonnie Holland’s opinion on party disagreements and would like to present another version of the split and the root cause as well as 50 years of the conservative philosophy moving to the left led by the northeast’s so called moderate wing of the party. 

What has it gotten us? $17 plus trillion in debt, institutionalized annual deficits, a welfare system that is unsustainable even after spending over $6 trillion since LBJ’s funding the war on poverty and paying for each additional child born into poverty. Seventy percent of children born into poverty of black households and 29 percent of Caucasian babies are raised in single parent homes. Our educational system has become unionized with rigidly imposed work rules that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with controlling the money stream. Where were the so-called moderate Conservatives while all this has been taking place? Granted the Democrats were in charge of the House for forty years prior to 1994.  The so-called moderate Conservative Republicans went along with this for the most part in the interest of their keeping their soft seats in DC. Fund raising goes on perpetually in never ending preparation for the next election. 

There are far more lobbyists in DC than lawmakers, handing out contributions for favorable votes on certain legislation. Passing entitlement legislation and “bringing home the bacon”, practiced by both parties, has been business as usual for far too many years. 

This is in effect buying the electorate’s vote with deficit financing to be paid by future generations.  

So, the lobbyists buy politicians and the politicians buy votes with giveaways and in the end it is the tax payers who get stuck with the bill.  

Practically speaking, there has been no conservative leadership in the Republican Party since Reagan and he was a party outsider.  

Look what we have put up for president since Reagan. The Bushes are very nice people but certainly not constitutional conservatives, Bob Dole is a fine person but was way out classed and was never thought of as a conservative. 

John McCain is likewise no doubt a fine person but a poor representative of conservatism. 

By Paul Ingram