One thing the Iraq war is accomplishing, in addition to giving us all something to have an opinion about, is, it seems, more and more veterans are getting involved in politics. Bill Gillespie served his country in the Army for 23 years, but the Iraq War and the policies of the Bush Administration gave him pause to consider whether or not he needed to serve in another way. He’s running for Congress in Georgia’s 1st Congressional District which has been Republican since Jack Kingston’s election in 1994.
It is early in the campaign and there are still a lot of issues and positions for Bill to fully develop, but as he notes, he’s represented America in uniform all over the world and has a pretty good foundation for understanding our foreign policy and how we are perceived as a country and as a people. Whether it is the Iraq War, immigration or healthcar, Bill believes that it is time for good, honest men, who will tell us the truth, to step forward and serve.
By the way, you remember 1994 don’t you! That was the year Newt Gingrich first fooled America with his Contract with America. That’s the year Jack Kingston got elected promoting term limits, and now his term has been 14 years. In fact, I probably voted for Jack, since I believe Toombs County was in his district at that time. (Could be wrong!)
What happened to the Contract that was supposed to change things?
Turns out it wasn’t a contract with America, but a contract with Jack Abramoff, Halliburton, and lobbyists in general.
Do you remember that contract? Well, if you were Republican then (like I was), you need to go back and read it and realize how utterly stupid we were to believe that things were going to change.
Here’s what the contract promised:
FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
Now, they may have passed this crap in the House, but as far as I know, that is about as far as it went. I do know that nothing in that list solved any problem, because all of them still exist. I dare say there was not one substantive change in American government as a result of the Contract, only a change in who sold us the goods.
I do know that as a Republican in 1994, I bit, hook, line and sinker, for Newt’s Contract with America. Over the next 6 years I enjoyed the wars of conservatives versus liberals. I trusted the Jack Kingstons of the Congress to bring true morality to government, not just radical, partisan morality that suited their base. I even voted for Bush in 2000, not yet realizing the depths to which the Republicans could sink when they controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
We need a new breed of politician. We don’t need representatives in Congress that are unwilling to oppose their own party and offer “rubber-stamp” support, no matter what the issue. We need politicians that can get above the partisan debate and actually solve something. We need politicians that don’t really want to get re-elected. We need politicians who will do what is right, even if we don’t like it every now and then.
2008 is going to be a landmark election year. Don’t miss it. Get involved. VOTE!!
Bill Gillespie, Democratic Candidate, 1st GA [28:33m]:
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