Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted To Stims

When you have too many stimulants, you start to make mistakes. It weighs you down. You become a danger to yourself and others. Like your children and your grandchildren, whose futures you are spending now to mitigate the effects of a recession that may last "several quarters."

We tried stimulating the economy before. We tried it before things got bad. It didn't work worth a damn. But it devalued our currency and added more than $150 billion to our national debt. It is the height of irresponsibility to do it more. Yet that is what responsible adults with advanced degrees and positions of high public trust are suggesting we do again -- right now.

John McCain is in an interesting position. He can say or do whatever he wants and has a national stage for doing it. His only reliable and long-held position on the economy is as a budget hawk, an opponent of wasteful deficit spending. Now is his time to stand up and say, without any practical consequence, that this is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it. I wish he would.

I wish he'd rein in his running mate on the issue of federalism, while we're at it. And offer her a dose of reality -- religion has not been mocked in this campaign season. Every candidate I can think of has gone out of their way to suck up to religious voters. But mainly, I wish he would stick to his guns and his principles and do what is in his power to give the Republican party some credibility on the issue of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.

It's no longer about the 2008 election. It's about what the Republican Party will stand for in 2010, 2012, and after that. By remaining silent on spending a lot of money we don't have to do something we know won't work to solve a problem that can't be solved that way, and at the same time allowing his surrogate attack dog to suggest that we should enshrine discrimination in the Federal Constitution, John McCain is abdicating the responsibility to lead his party and his country to a better tomorrow.

Shame on you, Senator. I expected better of you.