Dear Mr. Gillespie,

I recently received from you the picture of President Bush and your fundraising letter. The photo is very nice; thank you. However, the only thing I can say to the request for money is not just no, but HELL NO!
President Bush's term in office has been a disappointment to conservative Republicans and supporters of limited government. His "compassionate conservatism" in practice has much more in common with New Deal and Great Society liberalism than the conservative principles espoused by Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich. Among my friends, there is a term, RINO-Republican In Name Only. At least when it comes to domestic policies, this describes President Bush.
President Bush has presided, with the connivance of the GOP controlled Congress, over a period of massive government spending increases, spending money, as Jonah Goldberg put it, "like a potheaded teenager with a stolen credit card." The most egregious example of this is the recent Medicare prescription drug 'reform'-a program that will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions, if not at least a trillion, dollars over the coming decade. And the coming retirement of the Baby Boom will only make it worse. The Farm Subsidy bill, which, in addition to costing taxpayers billions, stands in violation of the ideas of free markets and free trade. The No Child Left Behind Act, which costs more taxpayer money and inserts the federal government into an area that should properly be the province of state and local governments. Federal government spending has increased every year President Bush has been in office, and at a rate that has greatly exceeded the combined rates of inflation and population growth.
Then there's the matter of the President's proposals on immigration, one of the most obvious and disgusting bits of vote pandering I have ever seen. Pardon me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression the Republican party stood for the rule of law and punishing those who break the law. So why did President Bush propose to reward lawbreakers by giving amnesty to those who broke our laws by entering the country illegally? Is he going to run for President of Mexico in 2008?
President Bush has also largely betrayed the interests of gun owners, a group of voters largely responsible for his victory in states such as West Virginia and Florida. Most prominently, he has endorsed the extension of the loathsome Clinton Assault Weapon Ban, an unconstitutional law whose passage helped lead to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994. Further, even though he professed support for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, he did nothing to prevent the attachment of poisonous amendments to the bill, amendments which ultimately killed it. Finally, even though many infringements on Americans' Second Amendment rights take the form of Executive Orders which he has the power to easily rescind, President Bush has done nothing.
On the campaign trail, President Bush promised that he would nominate "textualist" Federal judges in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas. He has kept the promise to nominate such jurists, but then has failed to support them, leaving them to languish in the face of Democrat opposition. Meanwhile, liberal judges continued to abuse the natural rights of all Americans in cases such as Silveira v. Lockyer and the Michigan affirmative action case.
Then we come to what I see as the most cowardly, disgusting act of President Bush's tenure: signing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the Incumbent Protection Act. It is disgusting because of the egregious restraints it places on the free speech rights of all Americans, rights thought important enough by the Founding Fathers to be placed First among the Bill of Rights. It is cowardly because I believe that President Bush also believed that this law was wrong, but signed it rather than take the heat for standing up for principle, instead counting on the Supreme Court to do the dirty work for him. Well, five justices of the Supreme Court showed less spine than 5 randomly chosen earthworms, and now we're stuck with this evil law. Because the President was a coward.
The President has done some good things. I support his tax reductions, although I abhor the fact that they added still more volumes to the already insanely complicated tax code. And were it not for his steadfast pursuit of the War on Terror and the overriding duty of national security, I would not even consider voting for George W. Bush on November 2nd. I would vote Libertarian without a second thought. I will think long and hard about whom I will vote for.
I still hold out hope that the President will see the folly of trying to gain votes by supporting programs that might as well have been proposed by Lyndon Johnson. Until he does, he will receive no money from me.