When will Republican Fred Karger criticize the Democratic president’s economic policies?

As many of our readers know, one-time Republican political consultant Fred Karger who happens to be gay has launched a quixotic bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The only problem is that unlike the other Republican Party candidates, he has barely embraced in whole, or in part, the unifying Tea Party small government principles and has not, at least not on his website, called for the repeal of the Democrats’ overhaul of our nation’s health care system.

On his Issues page, we have nothing about health care and only bromides on the economy. This is a screen capture of every thing he has to say about jobs and the economy.

Guess he must really believe that the Gipper just talked us out of the recession, given that he decided to feature it on his web-site.   Must have slipped Fred’s mind how Ronald Reagan worked with then-Fed chair Paul Volcker to wring inflation out of the economy while he pushed tax cuts through Congress and sought regulatory relief through the various federal agencies.

In Karger’s latest video, he echoes the Obama administration and congressional Democrats in wanting to take on big oil: Indeed, on energy, he sounds just like a Democrat, saying on his issues page that “We need to explore alternative energy, wind and solar power”, but offers nothing about reducing federal regulation on private industry, thus allowing entrepreneurs to look for new sources of energy, innovative means to recover them and efficient means to bring them to market.

It’s unfortunate that the only gay man who has announced a bid for the White House is running not on issues of concern to rank-and-file Republicans, but in line with Washington Democrats. It would be interesting to see how Republicans would react if a gay man ran on the small government platform that Ronald Reagan championed and that helped his fellow partisans win majorities in Congress in the 1990s and in the House in 2010, the very issues which animate the Tea Party protesters and which should form the core today of Republican philosophy.

At a time when Republicans are clamoring for a smaller, less intrusive government, our fellow partisans are not looking for an echo of Barack Obama, but for a real change in direction.  From perusing the issues Fred Karger presented on his web-site, he doesn’t offer the kind of change we seek, the changes our country needs.