GOPAC wants my opinion: Here it is
I came home last night to find a GOPAC survey in my e-mail queue. I tend to vote in Republican primaries (4 of the 6 elections starting in 1998), since that is the only election that matters for statewide candidates, so I assume that is how they found me. Here are the questions and my answers:
1. Do you support your state Governor’s authority to reject stimulus funds from the federal government?
Yes — I support the governor’s authority. I don’t support the rejection.
No
Undecided
2. The Pennsylvania Republican Party recently passed a unanimous resolution urging their lawmakers to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act that would eliminate an employee’s right to a secret ballot. Do you support efforts like this in your own state to oppose “card check” legislation?
Yes — I live in a right to work state, so this is not likely to be an issue here, but I don’t like the card check law at all. It’s overreaching.
No
Undecided
3. Do you believe our elected officials should continue aggressively fighting the War on Terror?
Yes — But I’m skeptical about Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Afghanistan was important only only because it was a base for bin Laden’s training camps. Those camps are gone. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan. The only reason for sending troops to Afghanistan now is to fight the Taliban. Is that worth sacrificing American lives for? If the Taliban take over again, so what? Bin Laden isn’t coming back. The action is in the border regions of Pakistan. Afghanistan is not strategically important today.
No
Undecided
4. Do you support the decision to close down Guantanamo Bay and bring suspected terrorists to be tried and housed in the Continental United States?
Yes — Gitmo is a symbol for the world of America turning its back on its own values. I think we should get rid of it, try terrorists in the courts, and clap those who are convicted in maximum security prisons.
No
Undecided
5. Are you in favor of off-shore drilling?
Yes — Drill, baby, drill. Especially off California and Florida.
No
Undecided
6. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger recently signed an executive order requiring utility companies to provide 1/3 of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. Do you support efforts like this?
Yes
No — I think renewables are vastly overrated. These rules amount to government interference in the market and an unofficial subsidy. Wind energy is a hassle for utilities and their customers. It doesn’t blow at the time of peak demand. We should concentrate our efforts on research for a means of storing solar energy.
Undecided
7. Do you support your tax dollars funding school voucher programs that give parents greater flexibility and choice in their children’s education?
Yes
No — I do not want my tax dollars going to religious schools.
Undecided
8. Do you support term limits for state and local elected officials?
Yes
No
Undecided This is tough. Fundamentally, I oppose term limits. I agree with something Tom Craddick said in his debate with his Democratic opponent last fall. “We have term limits. They’re called elections.” I don’t like term limits because they tend to cut off service just as a public official is gaining the expertise to be effective. Term limits empower the lobby and the bureaucracy. I want to empower elected officials. On the other hand, Rick Perry is the poster child for term limits. We ought to limit governors to two four-year terms.
9. President Obama recently put his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, in charge of the 2010 Census which will be used by your state to draw electoral districts for future elections. Do you support your local Republican candidate’s opposition the Democrats’ politicization of redistricting?
Yes — I am shocked! shocked! that a political party would politicize redistricting. Not really. I didn’t support the Republicans when they politicized Texas congressional redistricting in 2003 and I don’t support the Democrats’ attempt to politicize it in 2010. How is the census likely to be politicized? From Fox News: Critics note that the method of counting can skew the census. Democrats have long advocated using mathematical estimates, a practice known as “sampling,” to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say the Constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going door-to-door.
No
Undecided
10. Do you support tax incentives for small businesses that create jobs in your local community?
Yes
No — What’s the difference, in principle, between bailouts, which Republicans oppose, and tax breaks, which are just government subsidies of another kind?
Undecided
11. Do you support the election and/or appointment of activist judges who legislate from the bench?
Yes
No Not in either party, and especially not on the Texas Supreme Court.
Undecided
12. Which of the following is the MOST pressing issue a Republican candidate for office should focus on:
Job creation
Spending reduction
Reducing the tax burden Instead of borrowing or printing money, the government should enact a suspension of certain tax collections to leave money in the pockets of families and businesses.
Improving education
Securing our borders
Protecting traditional marriage
13. Which of the following do you think is the top priority for GOPAC in the upcoming election cycle?
Candidate training
Candidate recruitment
Issue advocacy — How to fix the economy is a battle of ideas and I’m not sure the Republicans have any.
Ballot initiatives
Gubernatorial elections
State Legislature elections
Local elections
(i.e. City Council, Mayoral, etc.)
14. What activities would you be willing to participate in your local community to elect strong Republican candidates to office? (check all that apply)
Volunteer at election headquarters
Register new voters — but only if they have a picture I.D.
Reducing the tax burden
Walk precincts
Make phone calls
Attend a campaign event
Make a financial contribution
Educate
Tagged: gopac, paul burka, republican primary, texas.
west-texan says:
Wow…
I’ve seen what appears to be some left-leaning stuff from Texas Monthly recently.
But…I agree with almost everything you said here.
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Prince Royal says:
Item 13 in interesting. The idea of GOPAC funds going into local non-partisan municipal elections was part of Burka discussion about a month ago.
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Matthew in Fort Worth says:
I now can call myself a Paul Burka Republican. We’ve had the ABC’s, now we have the PBR; not to be confused with the PBRA.
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Stuart Reply:
May 8th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I’ll have a PBR… but only it is really cold and cheap.
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Paul Burka's Research Assistant says:
What about me?
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Yellow Armadillo says:
A Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) Republican…I like it.
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VisitDallas!HomeofAmerica'sWorstPresident says:
15. Did you support W in the first election and were you too stupid to change your vote in his re-election? (Bonus credit, did you participate in any regional magazine efforts to promote W and his skills in the first campaign?)
A- YES!
Oh, find that definition for immiserate yet? (go heare: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/immiserate).
Yea, you’re innervating the body politick. Two words: Puh & Leez.
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treehugger says:
6. Improved storage benefits solar AND wind energy. The most bang for the buck at this time is improvement in efficiency. Ultimately no alternative energy strategy will work unless its cheaper and easier than the status quo.
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Ken says:
7. Do you support your tax dollars funding school voucher programs that give parents greater flexibility and choice in their children’s education?
No — I do not want my tax dollars going to religious schools
====
Maybe I am ignorant of what the voucher programs would do, I think that your reasoning to answer no is flawed. If I got vouchers, would it not be a portion of the tax that I pay into the local school district? Therefore it would not be your tax dollars going to a religious school, it would be a portion or my tax dollars that would be given back or not paid at all?
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west-texan says:
John Kerry would have been a train wreck like BHO is turning out to be.
Much worse than Bush…
Who kept us save by killing terrorists and treating potential terrorists harshly.
Water-boarding and Gitmo were the 2 best things Bush did…that have kept us from having another major terrorist attack for the last 8 years.
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Phillip Martin Reply:
May 8th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Yeah, but how many pirates did Bush ever take out?
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Anonymous Reply:
May 8th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
west-texan, you’re really one of those recently released Gitmo guys yourself, aren’t you?!?
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paulburka Reply:
May 8th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Waterboarding and Gitmo is not what kept us from having a major terrorist attack. What kept us from having another major terrorist attack was the government’s ability to use electronic surveillance to intercept and impede Al Qaeda’s communications and fundraising ability. They had to resort to using couriers for communcations because if they used computers, we would know it. And we could trace the money they had in banks. We restricted their ability to move money, information, and people.
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Conservative Texan says:
A relatively simple follow-up question on Gitmo. Most of the prisoners held at Guantanemo were picked up in Afganistan and all are foreign nationals. Exactly what U.S. crime would they be charged with?
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cynic on the floor says:
Re #3: I was unaware of any elected official actually “aggressively fighting” the War on Terror…. Unless you count push polling, robocalling, twittering talking points, and political posturing as fighting.
Re #4: Transporting & detaining *cough* enemy combatants *cough* to Gitmo was the dumbest of many decisions made by W’s administration. If you want to empty Gitmo, take them back from whence they came & let them be prosecuted there. If they are released by the local yokels, then local yokels can deal with them.
Re #5: You forgot Alaska – where you can see Russia from your bathroom window.
Re #11: Remember, judges are they only evil activist judges when they vote against your side.
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John Johnson says:
Paul, I find it odd what was left off this survey.
Do you find it strange that there was nothing on Right to Life? How about border security? Are they trying to downplay their more controversial positions?
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epibeemie says:
Intellectual discussion he says. OK.
1. Do you support your state Governor’s authority to reject stimulus funds from the federal government?
Is GOPAC hoping to encourage the electorate to become Constitutional scholars? Who’s qualified to answer this? OK, now who THINKS they’re qualified to answer it? This is just a warmup question to get the respondent’s attention.
2. The Pennsylvania Republican Party recently passed a unanimous resolution urging their lawmakers to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act that would eliminate an employee’s right to a secret ballot. Do you support efforts like this in your own state to oppose “card check” legislation?
I strenuously oppose the ability of PACs, news organizations and bloggers to define a debate using invective, name calling, unfair characterization and ridicule. Does anybody remember honest debate anymore?
3. Do you believe our elected officials should continue aggressively fighting the War on Terror?
As soon as we can get a formal unconditional surrender in the Wars on Poverty and Drugs, we can pursue the War on Terror. The WoT is a metaphor, dammit, and can end only when people stop USING the TERM. Terrorism is a tactic, not a nation, and it will be eliminated only when every last person on earth is happy with every other person. In other words, never. Like the WoP and and the WoD, the WoT is a convenient rallying cry that, again, frames a debate in such a way as to exclude perfectly reasonable opposition opinions. “Continue aggressively fighting the war on terror” translates to “continue to use a poorly-understood construct to rally confused Americans around a set of policies they otherwise might oppose if it were called what it is.” Take a deep breath and repeat after me: there is no World Muslin Politburo coordinating the Somali pirates, Algerian-French scarf wearers, Black Panthers and Taliban revolutionaries. If you group together a disparate scattering of disgruntled people who happen to be Muslin, and repeatedly tell them through the most powerful communications media in the world who to apply for funds and coordination (Al Qaeda), don’t be surprised when they become well-funded and better-coordinated. Al Qaeda– W’s best friend.
4. Do you support the decision to close down Guantanamo Bay and bring suspected terrorists to be tried and housed in the Continental United States?
Read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and then rephrase the question. The Rule of Law must apply to every….single….person, or it doesn’t apply to anyone. If you sincerely believe in Bush’s philosophy that neither existing laws nor the Geneva Convention applies to the prisoners at Gitmo, then you have an AWESOME responsibility to frame out a complete new framework that the electorate, the legal community and world opinion can agree upon as an acceptable third way. Because if we don’t, if we start making up our own, fuzzy, self-interested rules, everyone else can too, and blame it on us. China already uses Gitmo as an excuse to do anything it damn well pleases to its political prisoners, and we can’t complain. Add 50 years to that, and we’ll be building a new set of Holocaust Memorials to mourn the victims.
5. Are you in favor of off-shore drilling?
Couldn’t care less. The lead time is mostrously long, like 10 years or so, so any changes now won’t have any effect for years. Only reducing consumption will save us from running out before mid-century.
6. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger recently signed an executive order requiring utility companies to provide 1/3 of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. Do you support efforts like this?
Anything that drives California crazy is good for Texas. California’s out-there regulations sometimes make them look like idiots, and sometimes put them years ahead of the curve. Can’t tell which one this will be, so I’ll “hide and watch” as my Grandma used to say.
7. Do you support your tax dollars funding school voucher programs that give parents greater flexibility and choice in their children’s education?
Anybody even remember why we led the world in establishing universal public education–literate informed electorate maybe? Bueller? Bueller? I don’t dislike vouchers, but anyone using them to try to strangle free universal public education in this country is a MORTAL enemy of mine.
8. Do you support term limits for state and local elected officials?
Gimmick. GOPAC searching for a hot-button issue among the remnants of the Contract With America. Not a new idea, no new slants on it, yawn.
9. President Obama recently put his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, in charge of the 2010 Census which will be used by your state to draw electoral districts for future elections. Do you support your local Republican candidate’s opposition the Democrats’ politicization of redistricting?
In a case earlier this decade this US Supreme Court reaffirmed the notion that the Constitution requires an actual headcount for legislative reapportionment. Sampling may not be used for reapportionment, period, but can be used for other functions the Census Bureau does. Why would GOPAC be resurrecting a legally-dead issue? Trying to rally the ignorant around something, anything. Non-issue dressed up as an issue. Next.
10. Do you support tax incentives for small businesses that create jobs in your local community?
Do you ever wonder how many people and companies look forward to April 15th as a windfall date? Who don’t pay any taxes due to local sweetners and private tax bills, and actually get money back every year? If you don’t then you don’t know how government works. I’m suspicious of tax incentives, and dressing it up as being for “small business” just makes me more suspicious, like somebody working really hard to find a convincing cover story for something they’re doing.
11. Do you support the election and/or appointment of activist judges who legislate from the bench?
Blatant push polling. This question, like much of the survey, insults the intelligence of anybody who thinks. Reframe the question without the slanted adjectives, at the very least, or risk my returning the whole survey to you after wiping a part of my anatomy on it.
12. Which of the following is the MOST pressing issue a Republican candidate for office should focus on:
Job creation
Spending reduction
Reducing the tax burden
Improving education
Securing our borders
Protecting traditional marriage
Translation–if you’ve read down this far and haven’t gotten disgusted yet, you’re our kind of people, and we’d like to know which of these topics is most likely to get you to come out to vote next election.
13. Which of the following do you think is the top priority for GOPAC in the upcoming election cycle?
Candidate training
Candidate recruitment
Issue advocacy
Ballot initiatives
Gubernatorial elections
State Legislature elections
Local elections
(i.e. City Council, Mayoral, etc.)
See above. But it’s also a list of things GOPAC does, so if one of them really appeals to a survey-respondent, it’s an advertisement to get that respondent to donate time and money to GOPAC.
14. What activities would you be willing to participate in your local community to elect strong Republican candidates to office? (check all that apply)
Volunteer at election headquarters
Register new voters
Reducing the tax burden
Walk precincts
Make phone calls
Attend a campaign event
Make a financial contribution
Educate
Translation–if you were too dense to get interested by the previous question, then here’s a list of things we could trust even your country butt to do.
Really Burka, the only intellectual stimulation here is in seeing behind the marketing, and that’s a game most of us have played every time a piece of franked mail gets to our mailbox.
Tune in next week, when Burkablog will dissect the wit and wisdom of CocaCola advertising.
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John Johnson Reply:
May 9th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
I hope that next week he will tell us that he went to Scholtz’s yesterday and listened to what Tom Schieffer had to say.
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Anon says:
@J Johnson
I didn’t see Burka there.
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paul says:
If you are in favor of research on storage for solar then why be so opposed to wind energy? Storage benefits both for the same reasons. Storage is actually a grid issue not a renewable issue. You say its because wind isn’t available at peak hours. Not true – see actual findings of ERCOT – over a majority of wind energy produced during peak hours. Spain integrates way over 20% of wind without difficulty. Don’t confuse difficulty with don’t want to. I am frankly surprised you would make these generalities without doing better research.
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