Eberle Uses Web to Spread GOP Story; Bobby Eberle and GOPUSA circulate the conservative message throughout cyberspace with a blend of news and commentary that explains important policy issues

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 1, 2004

And it's not enough to talk about limiting the increase of government to so and so percent. That way the government just continues to grow. Until you sit down and evaluate the worth of some of these programs and start cutting or eliminating some of them government is going to continue to grow.

Q: One of the problems Republicans seem to come up against repeatedly is that Democrats have the advantage when it comes to rhetoric. "Tax cuts for the rich!" they complain. Or "Republicans don't care about ordinary people." How can Republicans go on the offensive? How can they gain the rhetorical advantage?

A: It's harder to be a conservative because our philosophy is to decrease federal spending rather than to increase it. Therefore, every time we compromise with the left we're losing. If they want an 8 percent increase in something and we say, "Okay, but let's make it 4 percent," and then agree to 6, we're not decreasing the size of government but increasing it.

As far as getting our message out to the people, it's very tough. There is no Democrat who is not "for the children" or "for education," but if throwing money at these problems were likely to improve the situation it would have been improving right along. The thing is, Republicans are for those things too, but we have ideas about how to do so that stop short of building up ever greater bureaucracy. At the same time a certain compassion is essential. There always are people who are going to need help, so how do you best help those folks? You help them to become self-sufficient, perhaps through the private sector and faith-based work, rather than say "the government will help you." You don't throw them out to the wolves.

Q: Who are your political heroes?

A: I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan and I'm a big fan of the current president. Reagan I like because he picked a few simple ideas and hammered them home without wavering. He came around just at the right time for America and helped put the country back on track feeling good about itself. Yes, this America of ours is a shining city on the hill.

As for George W. Bush, I first saw him in action in 1994 in Texas as governor. What I really like about him is that he stays on message and keeps coming. In his first campaign for governor he ran against Ann Richards. She mocked him from the get-go with nasty one-liners: He was "Shrub" not Bush, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth, and on and on. Bush never attacked. He had a positive vision, he talked only about the issues, and by the end of it Richards seemed in disarray.

It was a classic example of "positive campaigning pays off." Bush tried to do that same thing from the get-go when he came to Washington, but Congress is quite a different animal from the Texas Legislature. He did reach out to the Democrats, doing nothing differently than he did in Texas in that respect. But the Democrats weren't participating.

Q: What plans for the near future do you have for GOPUSA?

A: This obviously is a big political year and we hope to do a number of things. We're working on our own ad contests to counter what MoveOn.org is doing to bash Bush. To go along with our company's policy, we want to turn that around and be positive in approach, so this contest we're planning for the best pro-Bush ads likely will be geared to a pro-conservative, pro-Republican message. We can do that best. We're building up a panel of judges right now.