Presidential candidate John Cox Responds to State of the Union Address

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

GOP Presidential candidate John Cox issued the following statement on the president's State of the Union address:

"It was sad that the president's call for victory in Iraq was greeted with such little enthusiasm by Democrats, who could not bring themselves to applaud our troops' eventual success.

President Bush spoke frequently of hope and opportunity in his speech. But I am disappointed also in the president's failure to address the struggle for economic hope and opportunity in Iraq.

This part of the strategy has been overlooked, and needs desperate attention.

The people of Iraq need to be put back to work. We must re-deploy our troops within Iraq to protect their oil infrastructure and the Iraqi people must be given the tools to once again effectively and safely pump their vast ocean of oil so they can sell it on the open market. Then, they can obtain oil revenues for each and every citizen, and gain a level of hope, opportunity and economic freedom to rebuild their own nation.

The president's call for energy independence was a welcome one. To cure our addiction to foreign oil, we must increase domestic oil production, and support alternative fuels like ethanol and wind and solar technologies, as well as safe nuclear technology.

But his support for government-mandated mileage standards for cars to help achieve it compromises the conservative principle of the free market. This restricts our ability to drive the cars we choose to drive.

In our drive towards energy independence and in our zeal to create change, we must not replace the efficient power of the free market with the whims of the inefficient bureaucrat or the career politician. Government must set the right conditions for change, but must never mandate the terms of change. That is best left to the free market."

John H. Cox, 51, is the former president of the Cook County (IL) Republican Party. He is a CPA, real estate broker, attorney and investment advisor. John Cox lives in Chicago, IL with his wife and four daughters. For more information, visit www.cox2008.com or www.theonlyrealconservative.org.