Can’t you hear Lonesome George Thorogood growling the good news?

Voters now [love] trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more.

This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. The parties were close in May, with the Democrats holding a modest 44% to 43% edge. The latest survey was taken just after General Motors announced it was going into bankruptcy as part of a deal brokered by the Obama administration that gives the government majority ownership of the failing automaker.

Voters not affiliated with either party now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues by a two-to-one margin.

via Rasmussen Reports™: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere.

I’m no expert. Far, far from it, in fact. I try to keep up with this stuff as much as I can, but it’s a constant battle and sometimes there are days and days when life intercedes and I simply do not have time to follow a House vote on this or an Executive Order on that. However, I would venture to say that I follow things more closely than say the average person. I know maybe 100 average people and of them, I probably follow things about as well as maybe 20% of them, less than maybe 5% and more so than the remaining 80%. Just a ballpark guess.

This all being said, while there have been Republican responses and counter-proposals to much of what Obama has proposed and accomplished, they’ve received very little press and given the numbers of Republicans in Congress, the party has trouble being heard consistently against the Democrat yammering.

In short, I follow this stuff, and I’d have trouble piecing together just what the details of all the Republicans’ plans for the economy are. I’d suspect that a large majority of those 45% polled would say the same thing. Therefore, I think we can take the following from the results of that poll—it isn’t that people are saying “wow, the Republicans have a better plan”, it’s that they’re saying “wow, the Democrats sure are mucking this up, so I trust the guys saying no to them.”

Which is nice. Except that to KEEP these polls in their favor, the Republicans need to aggressively go after these voters with simple, coherent reasons WHY they’re to be trusted over the democrats. There are several of these reasons. 2010 will be an excellent opportunity to let America know about them. If we can hold off the socialized health care debacle until the 2010 elections, it will be a wedge that Republicans SHOULD press through the hearts of the Democrats…AND force responsible Democrats to take a hard look about whether it’s worth their political future to back Obama on this monstrosity.

Catch some government spending and you’ll be sittin’ on top of the world…:)

In feudal times, the serfs all lived happy and cozy lives on the manor under the total protection of the Lord. It was a nice little arrangement. Got an issue with your neighbor taking too much land? The Lord will take care of it. Having difficulty growing wheat this season? The Lord will take care of it. All the Lord asks is that you give all the product of your labor to him, and he’ll make sure that you’ve got a roof over your head and enough food in your belly to keep you working another day.

A key component of the recently passed $787 billion stimulus package is that it blows the doors off all the welfare reform that passed in the ’90s’ (as Clinton realized he had better meet the Republicans in the middle or risk lurching into oblivion as just another demented one-term liberal nutjob President). Here’s a nice little summary:

The welfare reform of 1996 replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a new program named Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The key to welfare reform’s reduction in dependency was the change in the funding structure of AFDC.

Under the old AFDC program, states were given more federal funds if their welfare caseloads were increased, and funds were cut whenever the state caseload fell. This structure created a strong incentive for states to swell the welfare rolls. Prior to reform, one child in seven was receiving AFDC benefits.

When welfare reform replaced the old AFDC system with TANF, this perverse financial incentive to increase dependence was eliminated. Each state was given a flat funding level that did not vary whether the state increased or decreased its caseload. In addition, states were given the goal of reducing welfare dependence (or at least of requiring welfare recipients to prepare for employment).

The [Stimulus Act] will overturn the fiscal foundation of welfare reform and restore an AFDC-style funding system. For the first time since 1996, the federal government would begin paying states bonuses to increase their welfare caseloads. Indeed, the new welfare system created by the stimulus bills is actually worse than the old AFDC program because it rewards the states more heavily to increase their caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under AFDC.

My guess is that Americans do not wish for this to happen. Some Americans, obviously, surely do. I would suspect that the majority of the recipients of this largesse would be very grateful for this. Free money? I don’t have to work for it? Sign me up. Liberals obviously love this as well since all those people taking the free money with one hand will be pulling the lever for the Democrats in elections to come. The Americans I mean who I think oppose this sort of modern day feudalism are the people who actually foot the bill. You and me. The “producers” of this society. The people from whom the government takes so that it can give to the takers of this society.

And at this stage of the game, as evidenced at least in the recent Stimulus debate in Washington, the Republicans speak for us. Not the so called “RINO” (Republicans in Name Only) Republicans like Specter, Snowe and Collins. We’ve seen Republicans like these get wiped out of Washington in the past 2 cycles precisely because they are basically Liberals in disguise. The Republicans who speak for us will be those who embrace core Conservative/Libertarian principles which appear to be making a comeback in the aftermath of the Obama spending orgy.

I guess Rahm Emmanuel was actually right….Conservatives CANNOT waste this Crisis of Democratic Leadership. They’re running our nation into the shallow water with this spending bill and it isn’t likely to get any better at any time over the next 3+ years. In fact, it’s likely to get a whole lot worse. We can’t waste this. We have to seize the moment in 2010 and force Obama to govern as close to the center as possible.

Then we put him on his ass in 2012.

Read this and see if you believe that any semblance of objective reporting remains in today’s media:

WASHINGTON: Republicans are preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending in the $787 billion stimulus package as they refocus their criticisms of a measure whose success could hurt their 2010 election prospects.

Another way to say the same thing?

“Democrats, who voted nearly unanimously to pass a $787 billion stimulus bill laden with wasteful spending, now face the difficult task of defending the bill from Republican critics eager to capitalize on its failure and improve their 2010 election prospects.”

Go ahead, this is fun. Try it yourselves at home.

Republican Senators using their brains.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of Republican senators on Tuesday offered a $445 billion alternative plan to boosting the ailing economy, about half of which would be in the form of tax cuts.

The stimulus package would include cutting payroll and income taxes for a year, as well as lowering the 35 percent corporate tax rate to 25 percent and offering home buyers a tax credit worth $15,000 or 10 percent of the purchase price, whichever is less.

Think about it. All you folks with jobs out there. Imagine taking hundreds of dollars more home every month in your paycheck. That’s a real stimulus, is it not? Imagine the things you could do with that money. You could add it to that savings account that you’re accumulating to put a down payment on that new home, right? Which would dovetail nicely with that $15,000 credit on new home purchases.

Now this is a stimulus that makes sense. Not that putrid, foamy stuff that’s spilling from the Democrats’ mouths these days.

Think about it.

Bobby Jindal being interviewed by Cal Thomas over at Townhall.com:

We’ve got to be a party that’s unafraid of our conservative principles. I’m not one who looks at these election results and says we should abandon what we stand for. I don’t think the country woke up one day and suddenly said we are a much more liberal country. I think the country back in 2006 fired the Republican Party and with cause. With all due respect to Nancy Pelosi, I don’t think the country woke up and said we want Nancy Pelosi as speaker . I really think the Democrats, to their credit, made the 2006 election cycle on Republicans and the voters rightly said, ‘we don’t like what we see.”

We have to apply our ideas to the problems Americans care about. I oppose greater government intrusion into our lives, but on health care, for example, for too long the Republican answer to this problem has been dumb. I actually admire — I don’t agree with his policies — Sen. Ted Kennedy for his approach. He is relentless; he is consistent; he knows where he wants to go. On SCHIP, Democrats said we want to expand it and Republicans said we want to expand it, but not as much as you Democrats. It was ridiculous how the Republicans framed the debate. We’re never going to win the debate if it’s about who wants to cover more children. The real debate should have been Republicans saying, ‘we absolutely believe all children should have access to affordable health care, but we don’t believe the best way to do that is through government-run programs, we think we have to work to make it more affordable.

via Cal Thomas : Interview With Bobby Jindal – Townhall.com.

I keep saying it, but the GOP was not going to win with McCain as its candidate. It would have done better with Palin as the main event rather than McCain, actually. He did as well as he did because of what Sarah Palin brought to the table. He’d have been creamed corn if he ran alongside a generic Republican.

Let’s see if we can realize this as a party and make some significant inroads in 2010. The liberal laden Congress will have had 2 years by then to demonstrate to America (once again) the utter bankruptcy of its ideas. Our saving grace is that while the Democrats do have a majority in both houses, there a number of them who are probably not Pelosi/Reid/Obama fans and were actually more conservative in certain aspects of their policies than the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) that they replaced.