By Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation
When a liberal debates a conservative on ideas, the liberal usually says the same thing. We can do better. Meaning of course, put the liberal in charge and things will be better. The sun will rise in the east, crops will grow, birds will sing and the world will keep turning.
Is that true? Or does conservatism not only work but work better than liberalism?
Simply put, conservatism works. Liberals love to talk about how great their accomplishments are. What a pity they don’t have any to brag about. In the days of the liberal’s favorite nation, the old Soviet Union, there was an artistic concept called “socialist reality.” With socialist reality, things were never portrayed as they were, but as they should be. Today we call it by the name of the mainstream media.
America is an economic mess, thanks to the far left policies of the Obama regime. If we want validation that socialism is a complete failure, we can look to the states as well. Which are the states that are in the worst shape? California, Illinois, and New York. What do they all have in common? They are all reliably blue states who have tried to implement socialist policies within their state’s borders.
What about the states that are in the best shape? Almost every red state is in much better shape than any of the blue states.
Compare two states in head to head competition: Maryland and Virginia.
Maryland and Virginia were facing economic shortfalls. What did they do? Reliably liberal Maryland took the liberal approach. Governor Martin O’Malley led the call to tax the rich even more. He proposed a “millionaire’s tax.” Not only that, the governor has increased spending to support a whole litany of liberal causes from same sex marriage to in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
The result? Maryland’s tax revenues did not increase and many of the millionaires that O’Malley and the party of fiscal incompetence wanted to tax fled the state.
Going just south to Virginia, the story is just the opposite. Bob McDonnell used conservative principles to govern. Facing a $4.2 billion dollar deficit, McDonnell cut spending and eliminated the deficit and now has a surplus. The legislature wanted a $2 trillion hike in the state income tax. McDonnell said no.
As a result of McDonnell’s stewardship, Virginia is doing well, despite the Obama depression.
This is not an isolated incident. In Wisconsin, the Republicans did the same thing with Governor Scott Walker’s Budget Repair law. They have taken the state from a deficit to a surplus. Unlike the situation in many of the blue states, Wisconsin is actually adding jobs. Because local school districts have been cut free from the shackles of mandatory union contracts, they are now able to save millions of dollars, cut the size of classes and not raise property taxes.
If liberals were intelligent, they would be conservatives. Unfortunately for liberals, they are married to a failed ideology. It does not matter how many times liberalism fails, liberals cannot accept one simple fact.
Socialism sucks.
Every time conservatives get control of the State Houses, something remarkable happens. Budgets are cut, budgets are balanced and the state prospers. Every time the left gets control of a State House, budgets go out of control, they demand taxes be raised and the state economy crashes.
There is a moral to this story. Conservatism works.
This is why as Tea Party members; we have to not only concentrate on the national offices, but the state and local offices as well.
For the Tea Party, we must remember, our ultimate goal must be to defeat liberalism the way Ronald Reagan defeated Soviet Communism. Reagan once told us freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. The policies of the left have brought us to the edge of losing our freedoms.
We must fight back to make sure our children and our grandchildren are raised in the land of the free, as opposed to a nation where we tell them the stories of when we were young and America was a free nation.
