Time for some Activism…

…on a couple of fronts. First, this is Support the Troops Weekend. If you live anywhere near Washington, D.C., we would strongly encourage you to participate if you can. As you know, Cindy Sheehan and her Stalinist friends will be out in force tomorrow, trying to make headlines with an anti-war, anti-American demonstration that will probably be quite small, if history is any guide. Nevertheless, the press will promote it relentlessly–unless we can turn out a pro-American, pro-troops demonstration that so obviously dwarfs the Sheehan Circus that it can’t be ignored. So: from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow, there will be a counter-demonstration along the antiwar parade route, beginning, as I understand it, at the United States Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue between 7th and 9th Streets NW.
If you go and take pictures, email them to us and we’ll put some up.
Then, on Sunday, there will be a big rally in support of our troops from 12 to 3 on the Mall at 4th Street NW, which is near the Air and Space Museum. Again, please send photos and we will post as many as we can.
Second, we have reached a moment of truth for the Republican Party. Enormous amounts of money are slated to be spent on hurricane recovery; tens of billions have already been appropriated with no oversight or specification as to how the money is to be spent. President Bush has said that the relief effort should be paid for by finding lower priority spending to cut, but the administration has not so far taken the lead in that regard. Ad hoc groups of Congressmen have come together to look for appropriate cuts, and to try to hold down the waste in hurricane appropriations, which are likely to be the most porkful spending in American history. These efforts deserve our support, through the Porkbusters Project and otherwise.
I had lunch last week with a Republican Congressman (not my own) who expressed serious concern that the Democrats may retake the House in 2006. Conventional wisdom is that redistricting makes that almost impossible because relatively few seats are in play. But, as this Congressman pointed out, in 1994 the Republicans won a number of seats not previously considered “in play.” If Republican voters don’t believe that the Republican Congress is making a serious effort to restrain spending and maintain fiscal responsibility, 2006 could be a disaster for the party. The forces of limited government and fiscal responsibility still exist on Capitol Hill, but they need all the support they can get. Please contact your Senators and Congressman and urge them to balance all hurricane relief spending with cuts in other domestic appropriations.