Dick Armey's Take On His Party

The Wall Street Journal has an Op-Ed piece written by Dick Armey who was the House Majority Leader from 1995 to 2003. I don't have a link to the article, but he mainly pointed out many of the things I have complained about in the past months. When the Republicans try to match the Democrats in spending and raising taxes, they are not only mismatched, but doomed to failure. He points to Colorado where the Governor, Bill Owens joined the dems in overturning the limit on state spending previously imposed by their constitution. Armey concludes that this killed any chance for Owens to run for President. It was here that Armey advanced one of his axioms. "make a deal with the devil and you're the junior partner".
Armey, who was one of my heroes along with Newt Gingrich, goes on to point out that these runaway spending binges by Bush and the other Republicans were caused by political considerations. Bush didn't want to run for office being bashed by the dems for starving someone or some program. This lead to Armey's next axiom. "you can't get your finger on the problem if you've got it in the air."
At the end of the piece, Armey points out that we who call ourselves conservative and Republican have to support permanent tax cuts, repeal the death tax, and control spending. It is obvious that for liberals to be elected they have to move toward us. Notice Hillary Clinton? This prompts the question of why Republicans want to act like them? A final Armey axiom. "when we act like us we win. When we act like them, we lose."