Posted on 09/26/2005 10:41:14 AM PDT by Rodney King
Rep. Mike Pence, a 46-year-old former radio talk show host from eastern Indiana serving his third term in Congress, is chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He has tried hard to cooperate with the regular House Republican leadership rather than confront it. So, he could not have been happy last Tuesday when he found himself in a closed-door auto-da-fe with GOP leaders as the inquisitors and Pence as the heretic.
Pence and the RSC's heresy was to propose that massive federal outlays resulting from Hurricane Katrina be offset by reduced spending elsewhere. Specifically, they requested offsets to cut highway projects earmarked by individual House members, and a delay in implementing President Bush's new Medicare prescription drug subsidy. The negative reaction by the leadership was reflected when Pence, offered a seat at a later meeting, explained that he would be more comfortable standing because House Speaker Dennis Hastert had just tanned his hide.
Neither Bush nor congressional leaders will tolerate tampering with the drug subsidy, the president's least popular initiative among conservatives. While the White House would be happy to see some highway pork eliminated, the House leaders absolutely refused. At stake here is a basic disagreement over the philosophy of government within the Republican Party as it nears the end of its 11th year controlling the House of Representatives.
Hastert believes it is not just the privilege but the duty of a House member to deliver federal projects to his constituents. Many younger conservatives could not disagree more, but most -- like Pence -- are loyal Republicans who are loath to criticize their leaders. An exception on the RSC to such reticence is 42-year-old Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who like Pence ran a conservative think tank before entering Congress.
Self-limited to three terms ending next year, Flake has acted as though there is no tomorrow from his first day in the House in January 2001. He, along with Pence, was one of only 25 Republicans to vote against the drug subsidy in 2003. Flake believes big government is addictive. "The leadership hooks the new members when they come into Congress," Flake told me, "and they stay hooked."
Pence was far more discreet in Tuesday's session with his party's leadership, but that did not save him a going-over, led by two powerful committee chairmen: Rep. Don Young (Transportation Committee) and Rep. Bill Thomas (Ways and Means Committee). The harshest treatment of Pence, however, was administered by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who does not like his rank- and-file members depicting a free-spending Republican Party.
There was more of the same from the leadership at Wednesday's closed-door House Republican Conference. Pence was not asked to speak on behalf of the RSC, and he did not volunteer.
But later Wednesday, RSC members in a press conference unveiled Operation Offset, an attempt to cut earmarks and reduce the drug subsidy bill. Pence offered to delay his $26 million highway earmark for Muncie and Anderson in eastern Indiana. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a 48-year-old second-termer from Texas, similarly would be willing to delay $16 million for roads in Mesquite. Flake is a rare congressman who asked for no earmarked highway funds for his district (though it did not keep him from re-election last year with 79 percent of the vote). Young is the grand champion earmarker, with more than $1 billion in the highway bill for projects in his state of Alaska.
The beleaguered conservatives see all this spending leading inexorably to a tax increase, which would redistribute the tax burden to the disadvantage of the successful and threaten an economic recession. Barry Goldwater long ago assailed Dwight D. Eisenhower for presiding over a "Dime Store New Deal." That stinging rebuke no longer would be appropriate for today's Republicans. They outdo Democrats on pork and are in the same ballpark on entitlements. Even Katrina and now Rita do not restrain them
Pence for President in '08!!
We need about 434 more guys like him...
Hay fella can I talk to ya for second. what the harm in a little talk.hey
Goolokin I like your hair. hey mister you got a ciggeret for me huh? monseur you
Speak french? parle vou francais? hey cowboy you wanna dance? a little dance
Never hert anyone. guy you wanna tango? it always takes two to tango. ooohhh
Your so tall. lets have some fun. pssst ttttt.
The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A real big spender
Good looking, so refined
Say wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in my mind?
So let me get right to the point
I don’t pop my cork for every guy I see
Hey, big spender
Spend a little time with me
Say wouldn’t you like to have fun,
How’s about a few laughs, laughs?
I can show you a good time
Do you wanna have fun, fun, fun?
Hows about a few, fun laughs, fun laughs, fun laughs
I can show u a fun laughs good times, fun laughs good times, fun laughs good
Times.
What do you say to a, hows about a laughs!i can give you some, are you ready
For some fun! how’d you like a, let me show you a good time!
Hey big spenda, hey big spenda hey big spenda.
The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A real big spender
Good looking, so refined
Say wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in my mind?
So let me get right to the point
I don’t pop my cork for every guy I see
Hey, big spender!
Hey, big spender!
Hey, big spender
Spend a little time with me
There is going to be no reason to vote in '06.
We need to draft Ron Paul. He gets it.
And we need to educate, educate, educate. Nobody who runs on a "get the federal gov't out of practically everything" platform has a chance of winning, until a majority of the electorate understands why this must be the goal.
There was a debate? When? Until I started seeing the budget figures it appeared that the small-government crowd at the GOP was the undisputed consensus opinion. Then all of a sudden, we find the GOP Congress outspending even the most profligate Democrats in history.
The GOP can't be changed from the inside. The Reagan Revolution, long on life support, is offically dead.
From now on, I vote my conscience, ie, for the conservative candidate, be it GOP or third party. If the country's going to fiscal and moral hell, it might as well do so quickly under the DNC rather than slightly slower under the GOP.
The only chance conservatism has is to give the GOP a wolloping defeat that will devastate the party and allow it to be recreated, or to empower a new party.
Ron Paul is one of the few that would make me cast in my lot with the GOP ever again. I believed the "let's get some Republicans in there" hype in 2000. It was crap. Government is more bloated and more intrusive than ever before. And the same people who mistrusted government in the '90s are now its most tireless cheerleaders.
Neither of these is presently realistic. The vast majority of American voters are addicted to one or more federal handout programs, and vote accordingly. One on one political education is an essential tool. Using the courts to force a rollback to adherence to the Constitution could help, but unless the voters are converted, that would just be followed by Constitutional amendments which explicitly sanction federal wealth redistribution schemes.
We have to play their way before we can have it our way--THEY'VE had 60 years to get the idea across that the gov't should spend alot of money on social programs, so now we have to play by those rules to defeat them. With more federal money comes more federal regulation, true, but look who's in charge of ther Fed...and they can set the rules to be right in line with Conservative ideas. Then, when things are rebuilt OUR way, there will be no more need, in the long run, for gov't money. We all know this--we just have to be able to show everyone at large, and the only way we can do that is thru $$$...
Keen observation! Blackbird.
PING
I agree 100%. My suspicion that this may be true was strengthened by an article in Human Events several months ago about how a significant number of votes for socialist and communist candidates in the 20's started the Democrat party down their current path.
GovernmentShrinker: Neither of these is presently realistic. The vast majority of American voters are addicted to one or more federal handout programs, and vote accordingly.
We are in real trouble if this is true. However, it doesn't take a majority to get the point across. Just enough votes to show that actually following conservative principles is necessary to get elected. You don't waste your vote by voting for a conservative third party candidate instead of a Republican. You instead make it clear that conservative principles are necessary to get your vote. When you vote for a Republican your vote is more likely to be interpreted to support "big tent (i.e., socialist)" Republican policies.
I heard that Sen. Grassley is suggesting an "across the board" cut....instead of having to put congresscritters on the spot..
I think I heard Sen. Kyl say that he would be in favor of that, because he feels that it may be the ONLY way that cuts are made...
I think I agree with Kyl....we need to urge them all to make cuts anyway they can...and STILL keep our tax cuts.
I don't know if Mike Pence has remarked on that option. But, if he is going to insist on stopping the Medicare prescription program (as much as I would like that), I don't think is will happen, so he might have to try to get the cuts anywhere he can.
If you "get a point across" by voting for a non-viable third party candidate, thus ensuring the election of a socialist Democrat, you're hardly making progress. First we need to spread the underlying principles, and wean people -- starting with "conservatives" off the government teat. A couple of weeks ago I was having a discussion on FR with a mother who claims to be supporting 2 children and her elderly mother on less than $40,000/year. She's very proud of herself for not accepting "public assistance", yet her older child (and soon her younger one too) attends public school, for which the cost to the taxpayer is usually $15,000+ per child per year. If her children go to college, they'll get federal government grants and subsidized loans, to attend colleges in which some academic departments receive additional federal grant money. Her elderly mother, who she claims to be supporting, is almost certainly getting Medicare benefits in excess of anything the mother and daughter combined have ever paid into the system. And yet she confidently announces on FR that she's self-sufficient (and at least a couple of other posters saw no problem with that claim). Do you really think she'd vote for a candidate who would cut off federal funding to Medicare and public schools and college student financial aid programs?
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