As portions of the Republican Party split over how to tackle fiscal cliff negotiations, Yahoo News asked GOP voters to weigh in: Which camp in the party do they support? Here's one perspective.
COMMENTARY | The Republican Party is said to be riven into two camps. One would accommodate President Obama's desire to increase taxes, spending, and the size of government. One would hold fast to conservative principles of smaller government.
Count me in the latter camp, which includes Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who criticized the John Boehner compromise, according to CBS News, as well as Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., and Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., booted from the House Budget Committee for their opposition.
There are two excellent reasons for this as the fiscal cliff looms.
While one recognizes that politics is often the art of compromise, it is useless to even discuss such a thing when the president is dead set against it. David Gergen has concluded that Obama and the Democrats are less interested in coming to an agreement than in humiliating Republicans. One should not be a party to that by pretending that agreement is even possible.
The second reason is that if the Republican Party stands for something, it must stand for smaller government. It should not be accept the president's premise that taxes must go up, but that the GOP has a better way to manage it and minimize the damage. It must be in the mode that increasing taxes will damage an economy in malaise and will likely cause another recession.
That is the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush (whose tax cuts are now being argued over), and Sarah Palin. That is my Republican Party.
-- Mark R. Whittington, Houston
