Why I’m Not a Republican

by Janine Hansen (Nevada)

When I am asked why I’m not a Republican, I have a succinct answer: I don’t agree with Republicans on the issues that matter to me.

I won’t bother with the Republican platform because the Republican party doesn’t. My mother always told me actions speak louder than words.

I recently heard Howard Phillips, Independent American Party [of Nevada] presidential candidate speak: He gave a rundown of the issues he disagrees with the Republicans on. I have adopted his list as my own. It includes:

• Failure to initiate an impeachment inquiry against Clinton
• Failure to cut off campaign funds to advocates of partial-birth abortion  
• Continued subsidies for Planned Parenthood, the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the homosexual movement
• Massive increases in federal education spending, even beyond what Clinton requested
• Another billion dollars to the United Nations to pay a phony debt
• More socialized medicine (Hillary’s plan in bite-sized chunks)
• Bosnia
• NATO expansion
• NAFTA
• Most-favored-nation status for Red China
• The $500 billion per year tax hike proposed for the year 2002
• The Mexican bailout
• The International Monetary Fund Bailout
• A $2 trillion budget
• Failure to effectively oppose the feminization of the military

How many reasons do we need? The Republican party has deceived its rank and file into believing that voting for the lesser of two evils will save us from moral impoverishment.

In the early 1970s, I attended a young Republican convention in Las Vegas,. I watched as the issues I cared about were repeatedly opposed by the leadership of the party. I left activity in the party to work on defeating the constitutionally dangerous and anti-family Equal Rights Amendment. I got involved in Eagle Forum through STOP ERA. In Nevada, in 1978, we successfully defeated the ERA by a 67 percent vote of the people. Frank Fahrenkoff, who debated me on ERA, was a state chairman of the Republican party and later national chairman of the party. Since then, nothing has changed.

Issues have always been the bottom line for me, and that’s why I’m not a Republican. I’ve chosen instead to work on issues through Eagle Forum and the Independent American Party, because, as Robert Welch said, morality sees further than intellect. There is no biblical excuse for a Christian to vote for the lesser of two evils. No matter what the cost, we must stand on principles.

We shame our founding fathers when we follow and support political parties and their leaders who violate the sacred trust of liberty that they left us.