I must say that Rich’s column was insightful but not in illustrating the Republicans’ supposed detachment from reality but in shining a light on the Democrats’ detachment. Rich touches on a number of issues which I will respond to one by one.

   First, there’s Ronald Reagan. I often wonder why liberals like Rich consider Reagan’s ideas to be outdated. What is outdated about lowering taxes so the American people have more money to spend and therefore have more money to give to the government in taxes? What is outdated about reforming welfare so there aren’t as many “welfare deadbeats” dependent on the government and simply sitting at home waiting for their check?

   Furthermore, what is wrong about being optimistic about the future? Rich calls it “mindless optimism” but positive-minded people tend to do more for the good of our country. The one thing I don’t like about Democrats is that they always seem to find something to complain about but only have one more big government solution for the “problem.” For example, unemployment and interest rates are at all-time lows; the stock market may be slipping but it has still experienced astonishing growth in the long term.

   However, liberals would like us to think that we are still heading for a recession because of the housing mess, which boils down to lenders approving people, like illegal immigrants, for mortgages they weren’t qualified and couldn’t pay for. Also, we’re headed for a recession because of our record deficit. As for that deficit, there are a number of solutions for that.

   First, we need to solve our energy crisis. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out in his 1/23/08 broadcast, over 65% of our oil and 13% of our gas is imported. Why is this? First (and yes this comes from Rush), we can’t convert all the oil we’re drilling into gas because we haven’t built any new refineries in over 30 years. It is too expensive for even the billion-dollar oil companies to build more due to all the regulations that were put in place in the 1970’s by the Democrat-led government. Furthermore, we can’t drill in places like ANWR because of the Democrat Party’s environmentalist wing. In short, we the people have the Democrats to thank for our energy crisis.

   Second, the government needs to tighten its belt. Admittedly, the Republicans are as guilty of this as the Democrats but are the Republicans proposing $600 billion in new spending on ideas like universal health care? I find it amusing that the Democrats would come out with idea after idea like this but don’t bother to mention how they would pay for it. Perhaps they don’t need to; anyone with an iota of sense knows that the government’s chief revenue source is taxes paid out of your pocket so how do they pay for new spending? They pay for it by raising taxes which inevitably leads to people having less money to spend, slowing down the economy, and it makes people more dependent on the government for things like health care.  

   The other issue Rich raises is race. I’m going to be blunt -- the only reason race is still an issue because Democrats keep bringing it up. Rich claims that the lack of diversity among the GOP’s field of candidates shows how out of touch the party is on the “issue.” However, shouldn’t who becomes President be based on the merits of the candidate and their ideas and not on race or gender, in the case of Hillary? I believe the majority of America doesn’t consider race or gender to be a deciding factor in who they vote for and the minority that do are very shallow indeed.

   Rich then closes his column with praise for Huckabee and McCain for “breaking out of the pack.” In response I ask, like Ann Coulter did in her latest column in Human Events, why a committed liberal like Rich would praise those two candidates in particular despite the fact that he obviously despises their party. The reason: because they’re liberals trying to convince us that they’re conservatives. Voters beware.