Can the Dem's become a Party Of Responsibility?
Do Dem's Have It in Them?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/cenk-uygur/the-party-of-responsibili_4594.html
The Party of Responsibility
"I've been reading a lot lately about what the Democratic Party should stand for. This is a question of framing and a question of principle. There are a great number of policies that I think the Democrats should support in domestic and foreign policy. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a central idea that resonates with the American people.
I think this central idea should be - responsibility.
Personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility and international responsibilities."
"First, let's get real. We all already know that the Democrats care. They want to do the right thing and take care of people. I knew this back when I was a Republican and almost all the Republicans would concede that point right now. The question is whether they know how to accomplish that goal. Are they too soft-hearted and soft-headed?
Are they too nice to be tough enough? Answer that question, and you can have yourself a permanent majority."
"All we hear now is excuses. There was a recession, September 11th, business cycles, yada, yada, yada. It's your presidency now and you own it. You didn't have to spend $198 billion in Iraq and still counting, you don't have to keep buying nuclear missiles for our Trident submarines, you don't have to spend $10 billion on a defense missile shield which isn't going to work, you don't have to give away $12 billion to the energy companies for "energy exploration" (read "oil drilling"), you don't have to give Halliburton a $72 million bonus (yes, I said bonus), you don't have to have billions of dollars in farm subsidies, etc., etc. Corporate welfare is still welfare. What happened to personal responsibility?
The Republicans have dropped this ball. The Democrats have one simple task - pick it up and run. The Party of Clinton should be out there forcefully arguing to go back to the balanced budgets we had in the years of President Clinton. They should be arguing forcefully for corporate welfare reform, just like Clinton reformed other forms of welfare.
I don't know that they have it in them. Perhaps they're scared of being called weak on defense if they argue against wasteful defense spending, like billions in new fighter jets that we might never use when almost no one else has an Air Force, let alone one that can begin to challenge us. I'm not saying they should argue against all defense spending -- that would be crazy. I'm saying they should argue for spending responsibly on defense -- that would be smart."