John Konop’s presentation to Madison Forum members at the regular lunch meeting February 12 was taped by WGKA 920 for presentation, on his talk show, at a later date.
Mr. Konop said that his perspective on the state of the GOP is not just his perception. It is the result of the response from bloggers and callers to his Saturday Radio Talk Show from all over the country. About half of the calls come from outside the state, and they came from all political parties.
Mr. Konop said the best way he could sum up the Republican Party is that it is being broken down into two areas that are very upset about the Party. One group is the Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs conservatives who are upset about the current Party’s trade and immigration policies. That group has been very vocal. It’s very obvious that both parties have basically been giving us lip service about our immigration and trade policies. It’s the greatest disconnect between what the people think and what the party’s doing. He said he spoke before the Democratic Party and brought up the same issue. He found that he was arguing with the Party leadership, not the members
The other group within the Republican Party that he finds is falling apart is more the Goldwater/Libertarian end of the Party. This end of the Party is clearly upset about this seeing, for the last six years, the largest expansion of the government since beyond the Johnson years.
He said that both parties have basically been bought off by the lobbyist money-changers in Washington. We will have Congressmen saying they voted for a particular highway bill because it is good for us. Yet they are spending money that doesn’t exist, and we have projects being built that are basically being bought and paid for by lobbyists. It’s equal to both sides of the party. Because of this, we now have a system where we have bills that are passed with 6,000 earmarks. Can anyone imagine any good coming from a bill that has 6,000 earmarks in it? We have a President who has never vetoed a spending bill. And, we have a Presidency currently where the word of a drug dealer is taken over that of a Border Agent.
Mr. Konop said what he sees, from the radio show and the blogs, about one-third of the Republicans have had it, about one-third are still kind of hanging in there, and the last third wouldn’t leave no matter what happened. The only thing keeping the Republican Party together is the incompetency of the Democratic Party. They have the same dysfunctional problems going on among their leadership. One part of their party is the way-off hippy-like group, and the other side making people mad is the Clinton-Gore side which has sold out to the middle class.
Mr. Konop said he predicted a year and a half ago that the next election will pit a Clinton-type candidate against a McCain-type candidate where, if you look at their trade and immigration policies, we won’t be able to know the difference. That is the situation we are faced with today. It’s a concept that basically the rule of law and American sovereignty do not matter.
Mr. Konop went on to explain the principle of The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith. One important point in this principle, which is not discussed by either party, is that you do not have free economics unless labor has the human right to negotiate, which is why we had this debate in our own country about slavery. If you look at debate today about why we do child and slave labor deals with countries like China, it’s the same slave debate we had in our Civil War - if we stop doing it, our economy will fall apart. And at the end of the day, the truth of the matter is, you have both parties selling out to lobbyists in Washington, They are pitting small business and American workers against child and slave labor.
His pointed out the recent Parade Magazine article listing the top ten worst dictators in the world. China has been there for awhile. If these countries can violate any rules, steal intellectual property rights, do anything they want, are these really, truly free trade agreements? And that’s the biggest lie of them all. Mr. Konop said that Al Gore is the person who gave us that policy. When he makes any comments about the environment, we need to remember that his trade deals did more to destroy the environment across the world than anything else, because basically, in these countries, they have no rules. So what we have is a very simple race to the bottom.
He believes we are going to see firstly, the emergence of a third party, secondly, the emergence, similar to a Jim Webb-type candidates, who will flip over to the Democrats, and thirdly, a huge swing either toward voter apathy which will get higher, or a huge swing toward a third-party solution. And the interesting part is that maybe Bob Barr might have a lot of legs in terms of what he’s doing today.