In his column today, conservative stalwart Pat Buchanan sums up the most urgent problems facing the Republican Party and the United States.
He notes:
- Half of all U.S. wage-earners pay no income tax. Yet that half and their families receive free education K-12, Medicaid, rent supplements, food stamps, earned income tax credits, Pell grants, welfare payments, unemployment checks and other benefits.
- The majority of Latinos, African-Americans, immigrants and young people 18 to 25 pay no income taxes yet enjoy a panoply of government benefits. Does not self-interest dictate a vote for the party that will let them keep what they have and perhaps give them more, rather than the party that will pare back what they now receive?
Then, in typical Buchanan form, he pinpoints the causes of the Grand Old Party's demise in blue states like California.
- The Republican establishment "refused to stop a tidal wave of immigration that brought 40 million people here whose families depend heavily on government. We needed a timeout to assimilate them and see them move out of the tax-consuming sector of the nation."
- Republicans, when enacting tax cuts, repeatedly dropped millions of taxpayers off the rolls, creating a huge class that contributes little to pay for the expanding cornucopia of benefits it receives.
- The social revolution of the 1960s captured the culture and converted much of the nation. According to a new Pew poll, the number of Americans who profess a belief in no religion at all has tripled since the 1990s and is now one in five of our countrymen.
