The Stout Republican

This started as just a comment on SR’s post concerning his hatred of repubs, but got too long and link filled.  So I abused my administration privileges and posted straight to the front page.  Mmmm, power tastes good, now I understand why Stout’s shirt collars are so streched.

 
For starters, I like Mel Gibson in Israel though, keep those damn Jews in line…plus he’s dreamy.  But as far as Mel Martinez?  After reading the bill you’ll see that it’s much more along the lines of Bush’s guest worker plan (which was also touted as an amnesty bill by most John and Ken listeners) than the soft stance Michelle Malkin would have you think it is.  From what I read it seemed reasonable enough: fines and back taxes are paid, a wait time must be completed (crime free and taxes paid throughout), and then finally you can apply for citizenship.  Maybe I’m not seeing the issue here?  Here’s a review on his stand on some other important-to-republican issues a la The Wikipedia.

• Economy:  Supports free trade generally; supports tax cuts; advocates lowering regulation of employers and reducing liability insurance burdens.
• Education: Supports No Child Left Behind Act; advocates more standardized testing; supports school voucher programs; supports English-only education.
• Environment: Supports funding state conservation preservation funding without raising taxes; supports opening up maximum amount of Forest Services federal land for hunting and shooting sports; supports “voluntary incentives” legislation to make it easier for private landowners to set aside land for hunting, shooting, and conservation purposes.
• Foreign Policy
• Cuba: Critical of Cuba’s human rights record; supports tightening travel and strengthening the economic and trade blockade against Cuba; supports U.S. government funding of persons in Cuba who are opposed to current Cuban government; opposes foreign aid to countries that oppose U.S. policies; Advocates closure of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
• Iraq: Supports the Bush Doctrine, but has asserted that the U.S. erred in hastily dismantling the Iraqi Army
• Israel: Supports Israeli self-determination; supports close ties between U.S. and Israel
• Health care: Supports private Medicare and Social Security accounts for new workers; advocates more thorough investigations of Medicare fraud; supports reimportation of drugs from Canada.
• Homeland security:  Opposes base closures in Florida; advocates maintaining “the strongest military in the world.”
• Religion: Supports free exercise of religion; opposes “removing all public displays of religious devotion” from society.
• Same-sex marriage: Supports an amendment to the United States Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.  In June 2006, he is quoted on the matter regarding not amending the Constitution, thus leaving each State to come up with its own laws, “It isn’t good enough to say, ‘Leave it up to the states.’…If we leave it up to the states we will see the erosion of marriage that we’ve seen by activist courts, which we otherwise will not see if we protect the institution of marriage at the federal level,”.
• Second Amendment: Supports the right to bear arms.
• Welfare: Supports Republican-style welfare reforms encouraging personal responsibility; supports programs for job training and retraining

Ok, so he’s for closing down Guantanamo, other than that he seems like a pretty good candidate to bring back some leadership to the GOP.  Plus you know how I love minorities in the party, they’re like the place-kicker on a football team;  they may win you some games in OT, but they’re always drinking by themselves in the bar afterwards.

-The Right Wing

Republican