For years I have heard that the Democrats are better than the Republicans at the art of politics and everyday the Republicans show how right that old axiom is. Ever since George W became president we have heard that the economy was in horrible shape. It’s been easy for the Democrats to stretch the truth about the economy or the war in Iraq with the help of the mainstream media. They did it during the general election of 2000 pretending that the economy was still humming along even though the tech bubble had burst and the economy was slowing to the point of recession.

One of the amazing things about President Bush II is the fact that he brought the economy back even after America and the economy were attacked on 9/11. He knew that the terrorists had targeted the World Trade Center as a way to push our economy into a depression. Not only did the President have to address the killers but he had to show the world that there was a strong steady hand at the tiller of the ship of state; and he did that better than anyone could have hoped for.

It’s hard to remember today, but on 9/11/ 2001 this country and the world markets were on the verge of crashing leading to a real global crisis.

After 9/11 the US conference of mayors stated “Economists estimate the attack cost the local economy more than $80 billion — from property damage to lost tax revenue — and some 97,500 jobs. Only about 40,000 of those jobs are expected to be recovered by the end of 2003, according to the New York City Partnership, a business advocacy group. New York’s unemployment rate is now 7.7 percent.”

The left-leaning Brookings institute went so far as to predict on Sept. 27 01 that “present economic forecasts are underestimating the decline in economic activity that we should expect in the immediate future. This is a genuinely uncertain time, and forecasts carry wider than usual error bands. That said, [we] expect GDP to decline in 3Q and to decline sharply in
4Q—perhaps as fast as in 2Q 1980 when GDP abruptly fell at an annual rate of 8.0 percent—which was the steepest quarterly decline of the postwar period. Weakness here will pull our trading partners down with it.”

Yet this sour outlook was not realized due to the president and the GOP controlled Congress’s policies, and against the Democrat leaders best attempts to stop them.

Why bring up old news? We are in a presidential election year and the
Party responsible for the country’s slowdown is blaming George W. Two years ago the Democrats took control of the congress after 12 years of GOP
leadership and since then the American economy has crashed! How we can stand by and watch Democratic policies doom our economy and have no Republican
voices pointing their finger to the culprits is beyond me.

Maybe this is because of the Presidents low poll numbers but no Republican leader, John McCain included, is standing up for the Presidents record. It seems that President Bush would rather try to be bipartisan than do what he
should be doing; setting the record straight! John McCain thinks it looks better to attack his own party than look partisan.

How can a party that is against drilling for oil blame George W Bush for the high price of gas? How can the party of Global Warming not be blamed for
the law that went into effect that changed what kinds of gas had to be refined, for different sections of the country? It went from 3 kinds of gas to 26 different kinds of gas and the Democrats will not allow another refinery to be built. We have fewer refineries now than we had in the 1980’s.

It is the Democrats who have been talking this economy down for two years now in their presidential primary contests. If you listen to the Democrats the United States is a racist country built on the backs of the poor and minorities…..we are a country of war mongers. imperialists and racist xenophobes who have polluted the world and left nothing for our children. It
is America’s fault that we have this global climate change because we are so selfish and use so much of the worlds resources that we should be punished for our life style. And don’t mention business, it only cares about filling its pockets and taking advantage of workers. It’s hard sometimes to
recognize the country they’re talking about.

It seems easy enough to see that it is energy that is pushing the US into this latest slowdown,(We are not in recession no matter what the media say. It is the cost of oil that has our economic growth slowed. We have Mexico, Venezuela and now China drilling in the gulf of Mexico but not the United States. It has been reported that there are billions of barrels of oil in the Dakotas and North Mountain West. Everyone knows about the oil we are not getting from Alaska even though the people from the region have been lobbying to start to drill.

The Democrats will say we need alternative fuels so we can stop being dependant on foreign oil, then push for us to use Corn and other commodities as fuel sources, without considering what affect that will have on our food
supply.

Why isn’t the Republican leadership responding to these canards?

When the Democrats took office unemployment was at 4% now it is at 5% a 10% increase. Gas was averaging $2.19 a gallon now it is over $3.70.

Consumer confidence was at 20 year highs now they are at 17 year lows. When the Democrats took over the house they had a supposed plan to reduce gas prices: they have never shown what it was. It is time to take the gloves off and make the Democrats answer some tough questions.

We have seen that it won’t be McCain—so who will it be?
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Jim Leahy is executive director of the Republican Assembly of Illinois and a top-rated conservative grassroots organizer