Slash Military Budget by 50%

Long ago, when Republicans were sane, most of them understood their job was to back the military in every way, increase military spending, and keep scaring Americans in order to justify huge profits for shareholders.

Today, in their urgent need to demonize the Democrats and the Poor, the Tea Party Loons became the Peace Party. Say Halalujah! Now, let us slash the military budget by 50% percent and cut taxes for those families that need it the most.

As a Republican I declare myself the leader of the Slash for Peace wing of the Republican Party founded by my kindred, Jessie and John Fremont.

Let’s have a NATIONAL SLASH-IN! Yeeeeeeehaw!

Stop throwing our elderly off a cliff!

Jon Presco

You’ve heard a lot from Republicans and their tea party counterparts in recent days about how they simply cannot support the limited military strike on Syria that President Obama has requested Congress to authorize. You’ve got to love statements like this:
“Our bombs aren’t any better than the chemical weapons the Syrians are lobbing,” said Kelly Khuri, a leader of the Tea Party group, who was nonplused at the first protest she attended a week earlier to be linking arms with the progressive left. “It kind of freaked me out,” she said.

The United States spends far more than any other country on defense and security. Since 2001, the base defense budget has soared from $287 billion to $530 billion — and that’s before accounting for the primary costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But now that those wars are ending and austerity is back in vogue, the Pentagon will have to start tightening its belt in 2013 and beyond. If Hagel gets confirmed as secretary of defense, he’ll have to figure out how best to do that.

Below, we’ve provided an overview of the U.S. defense budget — to get a better sense for what we spend on, and where Hagel might have to cut:

“Our bombs aren’t any better than the chemical weapons the Syrians are lobbing,” said Kelly Khuri, a leader of the Tea Party group, who was nonplused at the first protest she attended a week earlier to be linking arms with the progressive left. “It kind of freaked me out,” she said.

In Florida, Tea Party supporters are organizing to pressure Congress not to support the airstrike that President Obama has called for, in the event of a breakdown in the diplomatic efforts involving Russia. “We are calling our representatives and demanding they vote no on this,” said Billie Tucker, a founder of the First Coast Tea Party in Jacksonville, Fla.

And a Washington-based Tea Party group, FreedomWorks, organized its first-ever lobbying campaign on a foreign policy issue last week when it urged members to call Congress to reject Mr. Obama’s resolution to attack Syria.

The conservative movement has always had factions opposing American intervention in foreign conflicts, most recently led by Ron Paul, the two-time Republican presidential candidate and a Tea Party favorite. But the rallying of conservatives on Syria suggests a new political development: the emergence of organizing by the Tea Party to oppose American military action.

With prominent members of the Republican establishment favoring a military strike, in part to send a message about American resolve to potential aggressors like Iran, a grass-roots trend in the opposite direction poses a challenge to the party’s leadership that could play out in future elections.

Majorities of 59 percent to 63 percent of Americans in recent polls said they opposed airstrikes to punish the Syrian government over the use of chemical weapons, but Tea Party opposition is by all accounts far higher. The issue brings the movement into ideological alignment with progressive antiwar groups like MoveOn.org.

“There’s across-the-board opposition by Virginia Tea Party members of any U.S. involvement in Syria,” said Mark Daugherty, chairman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation. “We feel we have a basket of problems that need to be solved domestically in the U.S.”

Since its birth in 2009, the Tea Party movement has focused on economics, batting away other issues as distractions from its core mission to shrink government, lower taxes and, of course, defeat “Obamacare,” the president’s health overhaul.

Syria opened the door for movement leaders to link a national debate on foreign policy to their economic ideas.

“There has to be money spent when you buy Tomahawk missiles to lob over Damascus,” said David A. Dickerson, a leader of the Barren County Patriots in Kentucky. “My feeling is we don’t need to involve ourselves in a civil war halfway around the world when we have the needs we have at home, like bringing spending under control.”

On Sunday, Mr. Dickerson circulated a letter for Tea Party activists around the state to forward to their members of Congress, stating, “I ask you once again to confirm to us that you are a NO vote on the president’s proposal to intervene in a civil war where we have zero national interest.”

Tea Party supporters in Kentucky also aimed a broad campaign of e-mails and calls at Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who had hesitated to take a position. Mr. McConnell, who faces a strong Tea Party-supported challenger for his seat next year, announced Tuesday that he would not join other Republican leaders, including Speaker John A. Boehner, in backing a strike.

“Senator McConnell read the tea leaves,” said a spokeswoman for his Kentucky primary challenger, Matt Bevin.

Last Thursday, FreedomWorks urged members to call Congress to oppose intervention in Syria, which it says led to 5,000 calls the next day.