A Buchananite speaks
Filicchia, Ralph
Ralph Filicchia A BMCHANAHITE SPEAKS Tired of Republican promises Dam a middle-class, blue-collar worker with one wife and three children (one in college). Since I first started voting in 1960 I...
...Millions of people like me should not be forced out of the political process...
...But I do know that the American dream is getting to be just that, a dream and nothing more...
...I don't hear Republicans trying to outlaw God from the national debate...
...Steve Forbes is for a flat tax of 17 percent for everyone...
...There is a "theology" to both government and economics that the Republicans have failed to consider...
...Should it not then follow that the absolute power of corporate America also corrupts absolutely...
...Take the recent rise in interest rates that supposedly took place to stop the threat of inflation-even when there was no inflation to be seen...
...Here at last was someone who was talking to me...
...This is not an issue on the front burner of the average working man's life...
...I have come to believe that my present problems as a blue-collar worker derived from policies that have been designed to benefit the rich and powerful...
...Those who control the market are no more noble than those who control the government...
...I don't see the Democratic party doing that...
...In growing numbers people have lost faith in the political process and don't see how it can help their threatened economic circumstances...
...Their Compassion Card has been played once too often, and I am now finding compassion (and no longer patriotism) to be the last refuge of a scoundrel...
...You can laugh all you want about Ozzie & Harriet, but the fifties were great times in our country, and we could only gain by going back to the values and common sense that ruled America at that time...
...But-I have other problems...
...Ralph Filicchia is a truck driver from Watertown, Massachusetts, and a free-lance writer...
...The Republican party that I have long supported is no longer talking to me...
...That told me that something was wrong...
...But he might not last long enough for me to favor him with a presidential vote...
...Powerful forces are already circling his candidacy, trying to end it whatever way they can...
...It also made a lot of money for people in large financial institutions...
...Neither party speaks to the people where they live their lives...
...I don't hear wild ideas coming from that corner telling me that what was once anathema, like homosexuality, is now something we should promote...
...But I doubt if these "forces" are worrying about me as much as they are worrying about themselves...
...But lately I have begun to wonder if maybe there isn't a bit of truth to the charge...
...I own no stocks, nor do I have a fancy retirement fund that will someday pay me big bucks...
...That cost me some money when I had to use credit...
...The same can be said about capital gains taxes and all the rest...
...Should I then consider voting Democratic...
...He was not the usual political wind-up doll spewing out "political plastic talk," sounding good and saying nothing...
...I am not an economist, nor do I understand the arcane world of high finance...
...The Republicans are infatuated with the "magic" of the private sector and reflexively criticize government as the enemy of freedom, and the Democrats distrust the market, preach government as the answer to our problems, and prefer the bureaucrat they know to the consumer they can't control...
...The most common-sense statement I have heard on this issue so far was spoken by Senator Bill Bradley (D) of New Jersey when he announced he would not seek another term...
...But that is not necessarily true...
...I read Kevin Phillips's The Politics of Rich and Poor (Harper Perennial, 1991) and it indicated why some of this might be happening, something for which I could not blame the Democrats...
...The rising tide that supposedly lifts all boats could also enable the big boats to maneuver better so they can sink or capture the smaller boats...
...Since I considered communism a major threat of our time, it was only natural to support the party that addressed this threat in meaningful terms...
...Ronald Reagan met the threat head-on and I consider his presidency instrumental in the final defeat of the Soviet menace...
...But while I am rejoicing in this they quietly and unobtrusively decimate my financial stratum, making my economic position more precarious while at the same time doing what they can-which seems to be at my expense-to make life more financially rewarding for those who are already well off...
...So why should I get myself in a lather about this latest gimmick...
...The Republican party has retained its allegiance to common-sense traditional values...
...Instead I see a president who, once in office, makes a federal case about allowing homosexuals into the military...
...To this I say, Amen...
...But the average American working person is not going to be helped by a political party that wastes its time with these irrele-vancies...
...I was beginning to doubt it, then came the New Hampshire primary and Pat Buchanan...
...The Communist threat no longer exists, and I am now free to look at other aspects of national leadership...
...We believe in the checks and balances of government, and we believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely...
...I read Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele's America, Who Really Pays the Taxes (Simon & Schuster, 1994) and this infuriated me...
...Since I first started voting in 1960 I have always voted Republican...
...But can I stay with the Republican party...
...To be honest, what I see I don't like...
...I still agree with the social and cultural ideas of the Republican party, but at the same time I see a squeezing of the middle class that I had not previously noticed...
...If the government needs checks and balances to keep it from running wild, why shouldn't the rich and powerful corporations have similar checks and balances to keep them from running wild to the detriment of the poor and middle class...
...I was the consummate middle-class American...
...For all its incessant chatter about the poor and the average working man, the Democrats still hit me as the party of assorted crazies who seem interested in wrecking the America I knew as a boy...
...And who cares about a flat tax...
...In fact, it seemed the more Wall Street prospered the worse it was for middle America...
...He spoke like a man who knows what it's all about-and also cares...
...I didn't know any rich people, nor did I know anyone who was really poor in the true sense of the word...
...Right now he pays 39 percent, so it's great for him...
...The Democratic party is more interested in promoting social change than it is in promoting the common good...
...The rich were getting richer but people like me were suddenly faced with the prospect of layoffs, paycuts, part-time jobs with no benefits, manufacturers moving overseas, and politicians who seemed more worried about Wall Street than Main Street...
...He said: We live in a time when, on a basic level, politics is broken...
...No way 11 have had enough of the politics of guilt and pity...
...I might need another alternative...
...In short, I don't fear their social and cultural positions, and I realize they express them from a defensive position...
...The political debate has settled into two familiar ruts...
...I have tried to analyze this and have come to the following conclusions: It has been said by the Republican party that government is not the solution, but the problem...
...I was suckered on that one...
...I never placed too much faith in it, and being neither rich nor poor, figured it wouldn't affect me one way or the other...
...Buchanan at the head of the Republican ticket will make a third party unnecessary...
...but it's not going to do much, if anything, for me...
...Now I must wait for the action to work its way out...
...And I'm beginning to wonder if the policies of the Republican party haven't contributed to this squeeze...
...So then, why does the Republican party constantly praise one to the exclusion of the other...
...And this is not because of something the people did, but what those in high places did...
...Needless to say this always came from Democrats...
...They will offer me a clean America where there is prayer in the schools, no sex education in kindergarten, safe streets, the execution of mad axe murderers, and an old-fashioned understanding of good vs...
...The Republican party seemed the more anti-Communist of the two major parties...
...That is not the Democratic party my father voted for when he supported FDR and Harry Truman...
...Who says that big businessmen are more noble or holy than big politicians...
...evil...
...But that was then-this is now...
...Some of them were doing it with the help of Republican policies that have created loopholes and tax shelters that enable certain individuals and corporations to pay less tax, sometimes no tax at all, thereby shifting their fair share of the tax burden to everyone else...
...But if he's not there I just might need that third party...
...All my life I have heard the canard that the Republicans are for the rich people and the Democrats are for the poor working man...
...First, the Democratic party...
...I might be left with Republicans who are more interested in using me...
...A lot of people were getting away with murder and I was paying for it...
...I'm not rich and I will not appreciably benefit from them...
Vol. 123 • March 1996 • No. 6
