Liberals Retain Senate Control

Voting Record More Important Than Party Label

There are still many Republicans stumped as to what exactly happened after the infamous "1994 Republican Sweep".

Contract With America was made null and void by our drive toward socialism. I ran into a fellow the other day (the truth is he, in a daze, ran into me) wearing a T-Shirt that read "Good-Bye Department of Energy/Labor/Commerce/Education . . ." and had a caricature of Newt Gingrich with an oversized foot squashing the headquarters of these Departments.

For all the popping of champagne corks after Tuesday's elections, the overlooked harsh reality is this—the liberals retained, and are in a super-majority in, the United States Senate.

A best case scenario for the Republicans would have the Dec. 7th run-off in LA go the Republican way and that, by a dimple or an end to the "Night of the Living Dead Voting" in South Dakota, Thune ends up winning after an election protest/contest. The Republicans would end up with 53 seats.

But set aside the the party hats and the streamers for a while and look at potential voting instead of the paRty label. That 53 majority has to be reduced by the Republican liberals like Chafee and a number of other Jeffords wannabees. Here is how the party balloon gets deflated, ranked by the American Conservative Union Rating for 2001—the lower the number, the more liberal:

REPUBLICAN	ACU RATING	SENATE EROSION
Lincoln Chafee	28	52
Arlen Specter	42	51
Olympia Snowe	51	50
Ben Campbell	52	49
Susan Collins	58	48
Ted Stevens	63	47
Pete Domenici	73	46
Richard Shelby	73	45
Gordon Smith	77	44
George Voinovich	78	43
Judd Gregg	79	42
Richard Lugar	79	41
Thadd Cochran	80	40
Chuck Hagel	82	39

Not only is that a majority for the liberals, it is a filibuster proof super-majority at 61-39.

To emphasize exactly how hard it is to find conservative Republicans in the US Senate, let's take a look at a Republican Senator who is NOT on this list of the most liberal, Mike DeWine (R-OH), and some examples of his ideology:

voted against acceleration of the elimination of the marriage penalty
voted against capital gains tax reduction
voted against a bill that would withhold funds from public schools that barred Boy Scouts from using school facilities
voted for taking money AWAY from a Navy aircraft program so as to use those funds to increase a global trust fund for HIV/AIDS
voted for the use of taxpayer funds to buy more drug needles for addicts in the District of Columbia

Presenting Mike DeWine, your standard mean-spirited right-wing radical conservative. Now, do you see why this nation is moving into leftist land? If Mike DeWine is not on this list, just imagine the liberal voting record of those Republicans who are.

What was it again that the Republicans were celebrating the other night?

The label "R" may now be in the majority, but the "control" of the Senate remains firmly in the hands of the liberals.

This hang-up with labels is like some poison gas—you can't see it, you can't smell it, but it is killing all hope to reclaim our founding principles. For too many, the letter "R" is more important than the word freedom.

For those rare freedom fighters left in America, voting records are more important than party labels. Take a look at what happened after the 1994 Republican Sweep:

Year	Inflation (CPI)	Federal Govt. Spending % Increase over Previous Year	Federal Govt. Tax Confiscation % Increase over Previous Year
1994	2.7%	3.72%	9.03%
1995	2.5%	3.69%	7.41%
1996	3.3%	2.96%	7.49%
1997	1.7%	2.61%	8.68%
1998	1.6%	3.20%	9.02%
1999	2.7%	3.04%	6.14%
2000	3.4%	5.04%	10.82%

What Newt wrought—spending greater than inflation, and tax confiscation greater than spending, without one step backward away from the continued trend toward socialism. All this with the Republicans in control of the House and Senate.

The fanfare surrounding the 1994 Republican Sweep was truly amazing. Newt and Company said that the "era of big government was over". There was a literal rush to argue what department and agency should be shut down first. In the end, not only was there no reduction in the size of government, nor was there a department shut down, but the growth of government accelerated to an astonishing pace.

Looking back, it is clear that the Republican Party was as much to blame for the growing tax slavery and big centralized government as the Democrats were. As you see from the table, federal government spending increased (except 1996) over the rate of inflation each year, and confiscation of your paycheck increased at rates even above the spending.

Again, just exactly what was it that the Republican faithful were celebrating Tuesday night? A return to Spent A. Lott (R-MS) as Majority Leader and a return to liberal Republican tax and spenders in control of the Senate?

If you thought it was an outrage to see the ghoulish celebration at the Wellstone "memorial" you should look in the mirror as you celebrate this so-called Republican control of the Senate.

Your celebration caused you to miss the real news—the liberals retained their control in the United States Senate on November 5th. Senate floor votes are more important than party labels.

If you are one who has a passion to reclaim the liberties and freedoms that we have lost, and if you refuse to accept a socialist or communist form of government in the United States, the single most important step you can take is to chuck the party label and focus strictly on the direction and movement that this nation is taking.

If we grew the socialist state unabated after the 1994 Republican Sweep, it is likely, Yogi, that it will be "deja vu all over again" as history has a tendency to repeat itself in the United "Statist" America.