Republican Political Nominations in the Primary

We hear the “this and that’s” of all the Republican Presidential candidates. We hear what the NYTs says to its rapidly dwindling readership. We hear CNN, FOX, and the others’ points also.

Frankly, I do not enjoy getting only half the story, the “gotcha” quotes and the moronic Youtube “debates” with CNN planted leftists. In attempting to figure out the “who’s who” of the race, I tried looking in the obvious place, but the RNC webpage states noting at all, which is depressing or maybe I missed something there. Thus my only recourse is to look up each candidate’s website and try to list what they say they believe in.

Here are the website references in alphabetical order.

Rudy Giuliani

Mike Huckabee

Duncan Hunter

John McCain

Ron Paul

Mitt Romney

Tom Tancredo

Fred Thompson

I believe I got all of the top, near top, and mid level contenders here. Now let us go to their platforms.

I also tried to use a third party source for positions knowing full well that this itself could induce a bias based on the source. I did so because looking to use the candidates’ own sites alone, I found the process of comparison extremely difficult. That said, even the third party sites were not that good. I leave the one of the sites up as a reference not used.

Pro-Con Website

The purpose of this post is for reference. I wanted to have access to all the republican candidates’ websites and positions. I hope you find it useful also.
Needless to say, I found the whole exercise tedious and far too long for a single post. Here are the candidates in their own words, from their own websites. These are quotes from their websites, not my views. If any clarification was required, I added it in parenthesis. It is up for the reader to decide if these are credible statements or just politics. Please excuse any formatting irregularities as I really did just ‘cut and paste’ from their websites for data integrity purposes. Also, some candidates went into paragraphs, others bullet points, and others a combination of the two. Some were wordy and some were brief.

You get the idea.

Issues as I was able to group them. I only used three issues for space reasons or else the post would take up the entire blog page!

Reduce Government Spending, Growth, and eventually reduce the size of the Federal Government. Many candidates combined this with tax positions.

Guliani

End Earmarking & Start Budgeting Like a Business: Rudy’s plan will make government more honest, accountable, and transparent by making Congress budget more responsibly, like American businesses and taxpayers.

Reduce the Federal Civilian Workforce by 20% through Attrition and Retirement: Within the next decade, 42% of the Federal Civilian Workforce – some 300,000 bureaucrats – will retire. (Congressional Budget Office, “Characteristics and Pay of Federal Civilian Employees”, 3/07)

Require Agencies to Identify at Least 5% to 20% in Spending Reductions:

Propose a Constitutional Amendment Establishing a Presidential Line-Item Veto:

Use GAPStat to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Federal Agencies & Eliminate Wasteful Spending

Huckabee:

I believe that our massive deficit is not due to Americans’ being under-taxed, but due to the federal government’s over-spending. Achieving and maintaining a balanced federal budget is an important and worthy goal necessary to our long-term economic well-being. To achieve a balanced federal budget, I believe the President should have the line-item veto.

(This is all I could find on the website about government size. Please see “Taxes” below)

Hunter

I support a balanced federal budget, with additional revenue provided by economic growth, not increased taxes. Further, I support limiting growth in non-defense areas.

Budgetary savings must be identified through efficiency reforms throughout the federal government. Furthermore, we must aggressively attack the creation and funding of duplicative federal programs, many of which simply do not perform but cost taxpayers millions of their hard-earned dollars. According to Office of Management and Budget, 28% of federal programs are either ineffective or have results that are not demonstrated. Reforming, combining or eliminating those programs remains among my highest legislative priorities.

McCain

Enforcing Fiscal Discipline
As president, John McCain will work to ensure that money spent by Congress, and contributed by hardworking American taxpayers, is used wisely and prudently on legitimate national priorities, not squandered on wasteful pet projects and special interest earmarks.

Ending Pork Barrel Spending
Year after year, powerful members of Congress divert taxpayer dollars to special interest pet projects with little or no national value. This practice is especially egregious during wartime, when any federal spending wasted on parochial programs to satisfy special interests represents a failure by the federal government to properly steward tax dollars.

Increasing Transparency
Accountability and transparency are the pillars of essential reform. Americans deserve to know how their elected representatives are spending their money.

Paul

Worse, our economy and our very independence as a nation is increasingly in the hands of foreign governments such as China and Saudi Arabia, because their central banks also finance our runaway spending.
We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.

Romney

Establish Strict Spending Limits. Veto domestic nondefense discretionary appropriations that increase spending by more than inflation minus one percent.

Conduct Stem-To-Stern Review. Re-examine and evaluate all federal spending programs to identify waste, duplication, and inefficiencies that can be eliminated.

Reform Entitlements. In a forthright and bipartisan manner, as President, Governor Romney will work with Congress to address the looming budget crisis caused by increasing entitlement spending.

Institute The Line-Item Veto. Give the President the same power held by most state governors, to veto individual elements of a spending bill and strip out unnecessary spending.

Give President Flexibility. Authorize the Executive Branch to spend up to 25 percent less than Congress appropriates for a given project or agency.

Tancredo

Government is spending dangerously beyond its means. For years, Congresses and Presidents of both
parties have continued to spend more money than they take in. The largest component of this spendingspree is entitlement spending.

Simply put, federal entitlement programs are too big and cost far too much. The American taxpayer cannot be asked to continue funding numerous entitlement programs or be all things for all people. Finally, we cannot ask the American people to pay higher taxes to finance this spending spree. We must remember that federal government is in debt because it spends too much, not because it taxes people too little.

The only way we can rein in government spending is to take on entitlement spending. And the only way to take on entitlement spending is to fundamentally reform the crumbling and unsustainable institutions of the welfare state. Until Americans demand changes in mandatory spending, we will simply be treating the symptom of deficits rather than addressing the underlying problem of excessive spending.

Thompson

In a few short years–not a generation from now–a fiscal tsunami that could imperil our security and economic prosperity will hit our nation and place an unfair burden of debt on our children and grandchildren. The tens of trillions of dollars in debt that will be accumulated over the next few decades will do immense harm to our economy. This burden is now estimated at $170,000 per person and $440,000 per family. Time is running out to address this looming crisis. We need market-based approaches to reform that guarantee benefits for those who need them and embrace personal responsibility and cost-effectiveness without raising taxes. Given the scope and urgency of this problem, and the burden it will place on our children, reform is not only an economic necessity, it is a moral imperative that requires action now. I am committed to:

Opening the government’s fiscal books on this looming crisis for all to see and understand.

Working with individuals of all political persuasions to develop a comprehensive solution to the pending fiscal crisis.

Leading and making the hard choices necessary, to include cutting wasteful government spending, to safeguard our security, promote our prosperity, and protect our children and grandchildren from fiscal calamity.

Taxation/Views on Tax Programs

Guliani

Rudy is the real fiscal conservative in the race. He cut taxes 23 times in New York and turned a $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus, while balancing the city’s budget. Because he turned his conservative principles into action, New York City taxpayers saved more than $9 billion in taxes and enjoyed their lowest tax burden in decades, while the economy grew and city government saw its revenues increase from the lower tax rates. Rudy Giuliani believes in supply-side economics, because he did it and he saw it work.

Huckabee

I’d like you to join me at the best “Going Out of Business” sale I can imagine – one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all – personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment.

The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we’re not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won’t be taxed at all.

Hunter

An over-taxing government is the biggest contributor to creating poverty. By continuing to inhibit the economic growth and potential of our citizens, we prevent the investment capability to create jobs, increase income and provide a stable financial environment. I believe all citizens are deserving of tax relief and tax-cutting policies benefit the American economy as a whole.
Tax reform efforts should achieve the dual goals of improving the tax code system and allow taxpayers to keep more of their money to support their families, save for their futures, and protect their businesses and assets. It is for this reason that I have supported several tax relief packages passed in Congress that have reduced taxes and helped spur the economy by allowing hard working American taxpayers to keep more of the money they earn to invest in their futures.

McCain

Path to Lower Taxes
John McCain has always believed in the power of the American people, and the importance of keeping marginal tax rates low. But, tax cuts work best when accompanied by lower spending. Higher taxes and greater spending discourage entrepreneurship, foster wasteful tax-planning and slow long-term growth. Intelligently-formulated tax cuts and sensible tax reform will deliver much higher growth when they are accompanied by lower spending.

Paul

Working Americans like lower taxes. So do I. Lower taxes benefit all of us, creating jobs and allowing us to make more decisions for ourselves about our lives.

Whether a tax cut reduces a single mother’s payroll taxes by $40 a month or allows a business owner to save thousands in capital gains taxes and hire more employees, that tax cut is a good thing. Lower taxes allow more spending, saving, and investing which helps the economy — that means all of us.
Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending.

Romney

Restore Supermajority Requirement. Impose congressional rule requiring a three-fifths (60%) supermajority to pass any law that would raise taxes.

Tancredo

The income tax system, as currently constituted, is a source of frustration for nearly everyone in America — with the possible exception of the accountants we pay to help us file each year. I think most Americans, regardless of their political party affiliation or personal wealth can agree on one thing: The income tax system is in desperate need of reform.

One fundamental improvement over the current progressive and punitive tax code is a flat tax system where every taxpayer, regardless of their level of income, pays the same flat rate of taxation on their income.

Another approach would be to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Perhaps the most attractive feature of this approach is the elimination of the IRS. By eliminating the requirement for individuals to file tax forms every April, we could eliminate the need for this invasive and often abusive agency.

I would support either of these long overdue tax reforms to our nightmarish tax code.

Thompson

The U.S. tax code is broken and a burden on U.S. taxpayers and businesses, large and small. Today’s tax code is particularly hostile to savings and investment, and it shows. To make matters worse, its complexity is a drag on our productivity and economic growth. Moreover, taxpayers spend billions of dollars and untold hours each year filling out complicated tax returns, just so they can send more money to Washington, much of it for wasteful programs and the pet projects of special interests. We need lower taxes, and we need to let taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned dollars–they know best where and how to spend them. And we need to make the system simpler and fairer for all. To ensure America’s long term prosperity and economic security, I am committed to:

Fundamental tax reform built on the principles of simplicity, fairness, and growth.

A new tax code that gets the government out of our citizens’ pocketbooks, while enhancing U.S. competitiveness abroad.

Dissolution of the IRS as we know it.

Foreign Policy/WOT/National Security

Guliani

Rudy Giuliani believes winning the war on terror is the great responsibility of our generation. America cannot afford to go back to the days of playing defense, with inconsistent responses to terrorist attacks, because weakness only encourages aggression. Americans want peace. We’re at war not because we want to be, but because the terrorists declared war on us–well before the attacks of September 11th. Rudy understands that freedom is going to win this war of ideas. America will win the war on terror.

Huckabee

I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.

Our current armed forces aren’t large enough – we have been relying far too heavily on our National Guard and our Reserves, we have worn them out. When our enemies know that we are spread thin, they’re more apt to test us by provoking a crisis. Having a sizeable standing army actually makes it less likely that we’ll have to use it. So I will increase the defense budget. We have to be ready to fight both conventional and unconventional wars against both state and non-state enemies. Right now we spend about 3.9% of our GDP on defense, while we spent about 6% in 1986 under President Reagan. I would return to that 6% level. I believe we can do this without raising taxes. I will limit increases in other discretionary spending and rely on the normal increase in federal tax revenue that is generated annually as Americans’ incomes rise.

Hunter

Foreign Policy Objectives and Philosophy
I believe in peace through strength. I believe in a policy that supports U.S. interests by spreading freedom within the limits of U.S. capability. I also believe in ending the one-way street on trade.

I also strongly support U.S. efforts to establish free societies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The greatest protection of human rights in this decade has been the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Religious freedom is part and parcel of any free society the U.S. stands up.

McCain

A Strong Military in a Dangerous World
In a dangerous world, protecting America’s national security requires a strong military. Today, America has the most capable, best-trained and best-led military force in the world. But much needs to be done to maintain our military leadership, retain our technological advantage, and ensure that America has a modern, agile military force able to meet the diverse security challenges of the 21st century.

Fighting Against Violent Islamic Extremists and Terrorist Tactics
The attacks on September 11th represented more than a failure of intelligence. The tragedy highlighted a failure of national policy to respond to the development of a global terror network hostile to the American people and our values.

Effective Missile Defense
John McCain strongly supports the development and deployyment of theater and national missile defenses.

Increasing the Size of the American Military
The most important weapons in the U.S. arsenal are the men and women of American armed forces. John McCain believes we must enlarge the size of our armed forces to meet new challenges to our security.

Modernizing the Armed Services
Modernizing American armed forces involves procuring advanced weapons systems that will help rapidly and decisively defeat any adversary and protect American lives. It also requires addressing force protection needs to make sure that America’s combat personnel have the best safety and survivability equipment available.

Smarter Defense Spending
John McCain has worked aggressively to reform the defense budgeting process to ensure that America enjoys the best military at the best cost. This includes reforming defense procurement to ensure the faithful and efficient expenditure of taxpayer dollars that are made available for defense acquisition.

Paul

Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America. And now, there are new calls for a draft of our young men and women.

We can continue to fund and fight no-win police actions around the globe, or we can refocus on securing America and bring the troops home. No war should ever be fought without a declaration of war voted upon by the Congress, as required by the Constitution.

Under no circumstances should the U.S. again go to war as the result of a resolution that comes from an unelected, foreign body, such as the United Nations.

Too often we give foreign aid and intervene on behalf of governments that are despised. Then, we become despised. Too often we have supported those who turn on us, like the Kosovars who aid Islamic terrorists, or the Afghan jihadists themselves, and their friend Osama bin Laden. We armed and trained them, and now we’re paying the price.

At the same time, we must not isolate ourselves. The generosity of the American people has been felt around the globe. Many have thanked God for it, in many languages. Let us have a strong America, conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Romney

A Stronger Military. We must increase the size of our military by 100,000 troops. In addition, we should increase to at least four percent of our gross domestic product to defense.

Transform And Strengthen Our Domestic Civilian International Efforts To Meet A New Generation Of Challenges. Building on the Goldwater-Nichols military reforms of the 1980s, we need to ensure that our civilian instruments of national power have the ability to build joint efforts among our civilian agencies and empower Regional Deputies with clear lines of authority, sufficient budgets and the responsibility to develop and execute regional plans and strategies.

Strengthen Strategic Planning. Many of our civilian national security and foreign policy structures were created decades ago. Today we need strengthened capabilities to strategically integrate all elements of national power.

Protect The Homeland. While there has been much emphasis on protecting facilities and responding to attacks, a key priority must be prevention. Today, protecting the homeland must begin far from home.

Tancredo

(The only thing I found on foreign policy I found was this)

America’s noble sacrifice has purchased Iraqis a precious opportunity for democratic change; it is now up to them to ensure success. I believe it is now time to let the Iraqi security forces take the lead role as the main police force. Disengagement by our troops will help regional powers and Iraqi factions cooperate to forge a new balance of power. Unfortunately, complete withdrawal from the region will not be possible for a long time. We must maintain a military presence in the region to combat Radical Islam.

Thompson

The first responsibility of government is to protect the American people, the homeland, and our way of life. Today we face the urgent threat of radical Islamic terrorists. Al Qaeda is committed to attacking us here at home, and wants to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to kill millions. We must never give them that opportunity. We must defeat the terrorists abroad, and that begins in Iraq and Afghanistan–the central fronts in this global war. We must show the world we have the will to fight and win. A weakened America – or an America that appears weaker – will only encourage further attacks. We must persevere. As Commander-in-Chief, the president must ensure the United States has the means to achieve victory. Presidential leadership requires talking to the American people about these stakes, mapping out a clear vision for success, and devising a comprehensive strategy for achieving it. I am committed to:

A larger, more capable, and more modern military that can defeat terrorists, deter adversaries, and defend the U.S. and our interests.

A missile defense system that can protect the U.S. and our allies from long-range ballistic missiles.

An enhanced intelligence community, with robust human-intelligence capabilities, focused on terrorism and proliferation.

A robust approach to homeland security that will protect our nation from terrorists and WMD, regardless of where they come from.

A strengthened system of global alliances to better combat terrorists, proliferators, and traditional threats to our interests.

A judicial system that deals with the realities of terrorists and unlawful enemy combatants.

These are just three positions, but they took up 11 pages on MS Word. I tried to give everyone a fair shake and leave it to you to access their websites and learn more.