Bill Sizemore -- Why Democrats Sell Out

WHY DEMOCRATS SELL OUT

By Bill Sizemore

April 12, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

When I walked through the door of his newly appointed office on the House side of Oregon�s state capitol building, the freshman state legislator stepped from behind his desk and extended his hand. As we met and shook hands for the first time, I noted that the expression on his face seemed genuinely warm and friendly.

He was a moderate Democrat, a small businessman from a rural district and had just been elected to his first public office. I assumed that he still had a lot to learn about politics.

After exchanging the usual pleasantries, he asked what he could do for me, mentioning that he was a bit surprised that a well known Republican tax activist like me would ask to meet with a lowly, freshman Democrat legislator like him.

�I have just one �no brainer� bill that I would like for you to support,� I told him, as we both sat down. �All it does is guarantee that no worker will be required against his will to make a political contribution to a cause that he doesn�t personally believe in.�

I could tell by the way he was nodding his head that I already had him, but I went on anyway, quoting Thomas Jefferson about how forcing a man to financially support a cause he doesn�t personally believe in is sinful and tyrannical.

Still smiling, the Democrat told me that he was with me all the way and that I could count on his vote for my bill. I explained to him that technically the bill would prohibit deducting money from an employee�s paycheck for political purposes without the employee�s written permission. He continued to smile and nod in the affirmative.

Recognizing that our business was satisfactorily concluded, we both stood up and shook hands once more. It seemed to have been an easy sell, but I knew better.

Before I walked out the door, I turned to him and told him that I had one more thing to say. �By the way,� I said, �the public employee unions will consider the defeat of this bill their highest priority for the entire session. Coerced payroll deductions are where they get most of their money.�

Immediately, his jaw dropped, his countenance changed, and the warm smile left his face. He looked me square in the eye and told me without missing a beat that he could not support my bill and that he was certain that not one Democrat in the building would vote for it.

As best as I can remember his exact words, he said, �The public employee unions are very good to us Democrats come election time. I�m sure that not one Democrat in this building will vote for your bill.�

I thanked him for his time and moved on.

None of what occurred in that freshman legislator�s office that day surprised me in the least. I was just having a little fun at his expense. I was merely performing an experiment and showing him what a sell-out hypocrite he would become. He apparently was a fast learner.

You see, I figured going in that the fellow would support my bill on its face, because it was obviously the right thing to do. It should go without saying that no one should be forced to make political contributions against his or her will. Doing so is downright un-American.

I also knew, however, that this freshman legislator was a Democrat, and in the final analysis no Democrat would vote for my bill. If a bill limiting unions to only the political money members willing gave them passed, it would eviscerate the public employee unions� fundraising ability. For a Democrat to support such a bill would be political suicide.

If my new Democrat �friend� had supported my bill, the public employee unions would have had his head at the next election and his fellow Democrats would have ostracized him for being an outright traitor to the Party.

To this day, almost to the last man, Democrats continue to support the abhorrent union practice of taking political money from employees� paychecks without first obtaining their permission. Why do Democrats, who claim to represent the working man, so faithfully support something that exploits workers and is so obviously immoral? Because labor unions are the single greatest source of financial support for Democrat candidates, and that�s how most unions raise their money. They steal it.

Obviously, how the unions raise their campaign funds is irrelevant to Democrats. The unions� ill-gotten gains get them elected, so they sell out for the money.

However, labor unions are not the only ones pressuring Democrats to sell out and place political expediency over principle. In fact, Democrats do this all the time. It�s as if they are without a moral compass.

Did you know that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, and Jesse Jackson were all once strongly pro-life? That�s right, early in their political careers they all opposed abortion.

It may be hard to believe today, but all four of these prominent Democrat politicians have made strong public statements supporting the pro-life position. But that was an earlier time, a time when taking a stand against abortion didn�t automatically end a Democrat�s career. Today, it usually does, especially if the race is for a high office or is in an urban district.

Over the past 30 years or so, the radical, pro-abortion, feminists have gained such a strong strangle hold on the Democrat Party that a pro-life candidate simply cannot make it past the primary. Today, it is common knowledge among Democrat candidates and officeholders, that to run for high office as a Democrat, you must forget about your pro-life views. You must sell out on that issue. You must become pro-choice or forget about climbing the political ladder.

Let�s look at a real life example of how this works. Just a few short years ago, the current chair of the Oregon Republican Party, Kevin Mannix, was a Democrat state legislator with serious ambitions for statewide office.

In fact, Mr. Mannix would probably still be a Democrat today and he would be the attorney general of the state of Oregon, except he had one serious problem. He was pro-life.

Mannix announced early and formally filed for attorney general. He had every reason to expect an easy primary. After all, he was a veteran state legislator, and due to his prominent role in several popular �tough on crime� ballot measures he had statewide name familiarity. Also, he was a moderate enough Democrat that the Republicans wouldn�t bother recruiting a serious candidate to run against him. But alas, it was not to be.

The Democrat insiders saw what was about to happen, and were horrified at the thought of a pro-life Democrat winning a statewide office in Oregon. In a panic, they went on a last minute recruiting spree. With the help of the trial lawyers, they dragged from retirement a worn out former Speaker of the House, and begged him to run in the primary. They even raised the money for his campaign.

The end result was that Kevin Mannix was defeated in the Democrat primary and subsequently resigned from the Democrat Party.

You see, if he wanted to hold a statewide office in Oregon, Kevin Mannix had only two choices. He would have to sacrifice his principles and become pro-choice on abortion, or he would have to become a Republican. To his credit, he chose the latter and is now a leading Republican candidate for any statewide office he wants.

I am not saying that some Democrats are not pro-choice, because that�s what the genuinely believe. I am saying that Democrats really have no choice, if they want to be elected as Democrats. The voters of their district may be willing to elect them in a general election, even if they are pro-life, but they will never survive the Democrat primary, especially, as I said earlier, if the district is an urban one.

Special interest groups today have a virtual stranglehold on the Democrat Party. The party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy has strayed so far from its roots, that in order to win the party�s presidential nomination in the 21st century, a Democrat candidate must sell his soul to the labor unions, the abortionists, the trial lawyers, the radical environmentalists, and the gay rights activists.

Together, these groups provide the money and the foot soldiers for every major candidate running under the Democrat banner. Buck any one of them, and the sledding gets extremely rough. Buck any two of them and you are dead meat.

If John F. Kennedy, the Democrat Party�s golden boy of the �Days of Camelot,� was alive today and held to the positions he had when he was that party�s presidential candidate in the 1960s, he would not stand a snowball�s chance of winning the Democrat nomination. He would have to run as a Republican. That�s how far left the Democrat Party has shifted over the past 40 years.

Let�s look at a couple of other issues. Many elected Democrats are fully aware that the runaway cost of malpractice insurance is forcing doctors in key specialties out of the profession; leaving some communities without the medical professionals they desperately need, and feeding the skyrocketing cost of health care and medical insurance.

Will Democrats support tort reform legislation that places some kind of reasonable cap on jury awards for non-economic damages? Not likely. Trial lawyers, who are pillaging and plundering the rest of us through their contingency fee arrangements and outrageous damage awards, are far too important to the Democrat�s fundraising base. Next to the labor unions, which provide the money and the foot soldiers for Election Day �get-out-the-vote� efforts, the trial lawyers are the second largest contributors to Democrat candidates.

Who cares, if there are no doctors to deliver the babies in rural areas. So what, if health insurance costs are breaking the rest of us and decimating government budgets. Democrats would rather subsidize rural medical practitioners with our tax dollars and increase taxes to shore up government budgets than cap �pain and suffering awards� and tick off their trial lawyer contributors.

Democrats have sold their souls for campaign money.

I have come to the conclusion that many Republicans fail to do the right thing, because they are deathly afraid that the liberal media will say something bad about them and jeopardize their chances of reelection. Democrats, on the other hand, fail to do the right thing, because they are unwilling to risk angering the special interest groups that fund them.

Finally, I want to address one other factor that is contributing to the moral decline of the Democrat party. That�s their downright wicked commitment to party unity and lack of support for any kind of morality or standard of behavior.

There is no better example of this than the impeachment proceedings against William Jefferson Clinton. Bill Clinton was a scoundrel. His actions were indefensible. Everybody knew it. If he had been a Republican, his own party would have been calling for his head. The Democrats, however� shamelessly defended him, because he was �their guy.�

It�s ironic that the Democrats want the death penalty for corporate executives, who abscond with shareholders� money, but hold elected Democrats to no moral standard whatsoever. Even when an elected Democrat is caught driving drunk, as long as no one was hurt, they give him or her a free pass, as do their friends in the media.

When it comes to standing with your fellow party member, the Republicans are probably as extreme in one direction as the Democrats are in the other. Compare the way the Republicans treated Trent Lott during the controversy over his offhand remark at Senator Strom Thurmond�s office birthday party. There was not one racist word in Lott�s infamous remarks, yet Republicans abandoned him like rats from a sinking ship; even stripping him of his leadership position in the Senate, because of the way the Democrats and some in the media were interpreting his words.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, carried on sexual escapades with an intern in the oval office, lied other oath, and obstructed justice, yet the Democrats stood by him shamelessly, because he was a Democrat. Right and wrong meant nothing to them. Breaking the law meant nothing. He was their guy. It was all partisan politics to them.

I have watched the Republicans from the inside and from the outside. Six years ago, I was the Republican nominee for Governor in Oregon. Today, I am an Independent. I believe that the Republicans, in spite of their many failures, generally have a moral compass and know when they are doing wrong. They may choose the wrong path at times. They may compromise along the way, but they struggle with doing so.

Democrats, however, seem to have lost their way entirely. Many don�t believe in God or even recognize that some sexual behavior is inherently wrong. They invite pagan witches to perform opening �prayers� before legislative sessions. They support abortion, even partial birth abortion, because it is politically expedient to do so, and take campaign cash that was coerced from the paychecks of employees, who don�t want to give them the money.

Their campaign ads are designed to stir up the pot of class envy, usually promoting the notion that all rich people are evil and that everyone should hate their boss and demand more money. Their economic policies are essentially socialistic, which means they are constructed so as to use the power of government to forcibly redistribute the wealth without regard for individual responsibility.

The longer I watch the process, the more I have come to believe that the Democrat Party is increasingly on the side of evil and the Republicans are desperately looking for some safe middle ground, that in this war for the soul of America doesn�t really exist.

Editor's Note: The only safe political ground to be on is to do what's right. Never compromise on principles for the sake of 'getting along' regardless of consequences.

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Bill Sizemore is a registered Independent who works as executive director of the Oregon Taxpayers Union, a statewide taxpayer organization. Bill was the Republican candidate for governor in 1998. He and his wife Cindy have four children, ages eight to thirteen, and live on 36 acres in Beavercreek, just southeast of Oregon City, Oregon.

Bill Sizemore is considered one of the foremost experts on the initiative process in the nation, having placed dozens of measures on the statewide ballot. Bill was raised in the logging communities of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, and moved to Portland in 1972. He is a graduate of Portland Bible College, where he taught for two years. A regular contributing writer to www.NewsWithViews.com. E-Mail: bill@otu.org
Bill's Web site: www.Billsizemore.net

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"The longer I watch the process, the more I have come to believe that the Democrat Party is increasingly on the side of evil and the Republicans are desperately looking for some safe middle ground, that in this war for the soul of America doesn�t really exist."

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