Welcome

This is a new blog and I have created it to have a place to post some thoughts on the current political culture in America. I am a conservative who firmly believes in the ideal that government should protect the rights of the people. It should not intrude on their privacy or try to impose itself on them. While I am deeply affected by my faith in Jesus, I reject the notion that our government should try to impose a set of laws which produce a moral population. People in their natural state are in opposition to the righteousness God expects. That is why we need Jesus. Therefore creating laws that will make people conform with that righteousness is foolish. It will cause people to reject Jesus rather than embrace Him.

People will choose righteous behavior as a result of their desire to please God only when they have a right relationship with Him. However, while this is not a theological blog, I can hardly talk about politics without establishing a baseline. A large part of my political thinking is based on my faith. However, I did ant to state up front that I do not want to reform the behavior of our culture, I do want to ensure our culture is not hostile to my faith.

So why "The Ex Republican"? Well, Ex republican was taken, :-) I spent many years vigorously supporting the GOP. I have worked on the campaigns of both Bush presidents as well as Ronald Reagan. I have contributed time, talents and hard earned cash. Why? Because I felt the ideals of the Republican party most closely aligned to my views. However, I see by their actions they do not. George W. Bush had no excuse not to take action during his second term before the Congress fell to the Democrats. Why was there no concerted effort to push through an agenda that forces the people to see a real leader? I'll tell you why. While the Republican party claims they are for smaller government, that means smaller only by comparison to the Democrats. It does not mean actually reducing the size of government. They play the same games as the Dems do. They call a reduction in the amount they increase spending as a budget cut. Never mind the fact that more dollars are being spent. Whatever happened to actually cutting programs and spending? I can understand why Bush would have been reluctant to do anything too radical before the 2004 election. The media could easily misrepresent the facts. However, after the election, he had a republican house and senate and all he had to do was say to them, "Since I don't have a line item veto, send me single issue bills. I will sign them into law." With that, he could have easily done what this country needs.

The fact is he and the Republican party don't want to reduce government, they just want to focus the growth on their favorite areas. That is no better than what the Democrats want to do on a fiscal side.

On a morality side, the Republicans are so afraid of the media, they will never actually take a stand for the things that really matter so they will fight for things that are on the periphery. They could fight abortion on demand, but instead they fight homosexual marriage. While I would prefer not to have homosexuals getting married, I do not see it being anywhere near as important as protecting the lives of those who are dying daily.

That concludes my first post. In the future, I will get more in depth. I will take on discussions about the candidates and their statements. I will also recount some anecdotes I've observed over the years.