Posted on 01/03/2006 7:14:51 AM PST by Gipper08
Given that it's almost three years to the election, this makes me snooooooze.
HE ran an article last week which was unusually adulatory, as well.
Unlikely Rebel On The Right
Meet Mike Pence, the conservative who's leading a revolt against runaway spending
GOP conservatives in the House have an almost robotic loyalty to the White House and to stern leaders such as Tom DeLay. How, then, to explain Mike Pence of Indiana? As a freshman in 2001, he fought President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which he considered a Big Government boondoggle -- and was badly defeated. In his second term, he tried to scuttle Bush's $720 billion Medicare prescription benefit -- and lost by a whisker. This year, Pence, horrified by exploding federal spending, led a backbench rebellion against a blank check for the costs of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.
But something surprising happened: He won. House leaders agreed to seek billions in spending cuts just days after DeLay insisted most of the fat had already been sweated out of the budget.
Pence, soft-spoken and prematurely gray at 46, is an unlikely rebel. An evangelical Christian and former radio talk-show host, he likes to recite Bill Cosby routines. But he has a bully pulpit for his jeremiads against runaway spending: leadership of the Republican Study Committee, a bloc of GOP budget hawks that includes more than 100 of the 231 House Republicans and is increasingly inclined to challenge its own leadership and a weakened President. While Pence has voted with Bush 95% of the time, it's the other 5% that sticks in his craw. "I've had reason to doubt [Bush's] commitment to limited government and fiscal discipline," says Pence, adding that "Hurricane Katrina laid bare a fiscal course...that was contrary to the hopes of millions of Americans."
That kind of criticism has many in the business community quietly applauding the backlash over big deficits. "Less government spending tends to be good for the long-term stability of the economy, which is good for business," says David K. Rehr, outgoing president of the National Beer Wholesalers Assn. But some corporate reps are concerned about Pence's emphasis on hot-button issues such as restricting immigration and battling Hollywood sex, which pit him against business interests. Indeed, cultural concerns drove Pence & Co. to block the leadership's hand-picked choice to replace DeLay, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), an economic conservative seen as soft on social issues. That power play led many to speculate that Pence eventually hopes to follow the path of his political hero, Newt Gingrich, to the Speakership of the House.
The grandson of an Irish immigrant bus driver, Pence was working at an Indianapolis law firm when he decided to become a foot soldier in Gingrich's conservative revolution. After failed bids for Congress in 1988 and 1990, he decided that "God had other plans for my life." He became host of a syndicated talk-radio show on 18 stations until his winning 2000 race.
As a lawmaker, he has ruffled powerful feathers by repeatedly opposing GOP proposals to expand the reach of Uncle Sam. But he hasn't been a consistent foe of federal largess. He backed a 2002 farm bill that steered benefits to his agricultural district. "I have voted for my share of spending," he concedes. In penance, he has offered up some home-state highway projects to help offset hurricane cleanup spending. He's even produced a five-year, $370 billion "hit list" that targets Bush pet projects like NASA'S return-to-the-moon initiative.
The White House isn't ready to give up its rockets, but Pence's rebels appear to have turned the tide. The Administration is emphasizing the need to produce a lean budget and House leaders are demanding that balky committee chairmen make cuts in their own fiefdoms. And Pence, the new power broker, will be in the middle of the dealmaking. If he wields his clout deftly, many colleagues believe that the next Newt could be a self-effacing Hoosier as comfortable quoting Scripture as the Contract With America.
The article seems fine, but here's the problem: Businessweek as a radically leftist publication. They print nothing without motivation. Basic rule of politics: If the other side is plugging for one of your candidates, you've got a problem. Businessweek likes him? Someone better start checking Pence's closet for skeletons...
This line in particular bothers me. How can a 16-year-old reach this conclusion? He is either being fed nonsense by the adults in his life or someone else "contributed to" this article. Either way, he is strong on opinion and short on facts.
It probably won't be the last HE story on this extraordinary young Congressional leader.
Pence handles the media better than anyone since Reagan.You have to remember the media loves it when Republicans fight Republicans.They love REVOLTS within the party.What they do not realize is that Pence is making the party stronger.They will soon find out.
Ask him. He's one of our very own.
This line in particular bothers me. How did you reach this conclusion?
Huh? I venture to say more people have heard of these 3 conservatives than have heard of Mike Pence.
In fact this is the first time I've ever heard Pence's name and I'm pretty sure I follow politics closer than the average US citizen.
MKM
"Even such conservatives as Sens. George Allen, Sam Brownback, and Rick Santorum can't do it"
Medicare,NCLB,and immigration leaves these three "conservatives" unelectable in a 10 way republican primary.
Could you break down your complaints by conservative, instead of grouping them? Thanks.
Look at this POst article wriiten by Hanna Rosin.She obviously is a far left secularists who does not understand and possibly does not like Christians.Read the way Pence is able to "handle" her and control his portion of the artilce.Media skills and savy combined with Leadership and courage is what we need in 08.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10508-2005Mar5.html
...............Rep. Mike Pence (D-Ind.) has promised to make a brief appearance at this antiabortion news conference. By the time he gets there it's mostly over, but the women holding it are eager to repeat their performance for him.
Jackie Bullard jumps right in to explain that an abortion left her unable to have children, so she adopted Arabella, a "child of rape whose birth mother is a drug addict," she says. "But she is highly intelligent and perfectly normal." Five-year-old Arabella is there, listening to this story she's no doubt heard many times, fidgeting at her mother's waist.
On a table at the back of the room someone has lined up dozens of pairs of tiny shoes to represent all the "murdered" children. In the corner a group of teenagers chat excitedly; they've just returned from the Supreme Court, where they stood with red masking tape across their mouths to represent the "silent screams of the unborn babies." All that's missing here is the graphic fetus pictures ubiquitous in the '90s.
Although Pence is low-key, he stands out in this crowd; he is neat and compact, with silvery hair and a pleasant face wasted on radio, the medium that made him famous in Indiana. When someone in the crowd talks to him about abortion doctors preying on vulnerable women for financial gain, Pence translates that sentiment into modern feminist terms.
"One of the fascinating things about the suffragette movement," he begins brightly, then describes how Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others recognized that they would be subjugated to the whims of men unless they could vote, translating the message of the dour news conference into progressive feminist terms.
Pence was raised Catholic, born again in college, but a political experience brought on his real "conversion." In 1990 Pence ran what he described as the nastiest race in Indiana history. He lost.
From then on he vowed that even while engaged in politics he would always be "true to his faith." Other Christian Republicans had had that revelation, of course, a decade earlier, but they were not his models: "They came in, boom, arms flailing, with lots of righteous indignation," he says of the Christian Coalition. "But that bombast and tone of the early movement is inconsistent with why we're here." What he means, really, was being nicer, or as he puts it, upholding "standards of integrity and civility."
Pence, 45, became a conservative radio talk show host who is stylistically the anti-Rush Limbaugh. "I'm a conservative, but I'm not in a bad mood about it," he'd say on air. Last year he ran for Congress again with the aim of rehabilitating himself; in ads he never mentioned his opponent.
After he got to Washington his colleagues voted him head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of powerful House conservatives once known as Newt Gingrich's henchmen. Their platform hasn't changed in 10 years, but under Pence's leadership it's a new day. "You do not demonize those who disagree with you," he says. "If you believe in a woman's right to choose, you're not a bad person, we just disagree."
His aim is to subtly "season" his sentences with references to God, not overwhelm them.
"I hope," he says, "I never make people uncomfortable."
Not too long ago relations between politics and evangelicals were defined by discomfort and tension.
Mark Souder is also a Republican congressman from Indiana, nine years older than Pence. His Baptist grandfather never voted, and his parents did it holding their noses. "The way my family looked at Washington, if it wasn't Hell it was a direct suburb."
In 1971 Souder attended a convention of Young Americans for Freedom, the Barry Goldwater groupies. There he recalls the handful of evangelicals sussing each other out through code words and glances, "much like gay people do today." Once they were sure they'd found one of their own, they'd lean over and whisper "I'm praying for you," then slide away. Souder's political friends were all Catholics and Jews.
Lyric Hassler, a political consultant, with husband Jeff, a Senate staffer, are evangelicals new to Washington. (Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
Friday's Question:
It was not until the early 20th century that the Senate enacted rules allowing members to end filibusters and unlimited debate. How many votes were required to invoke cloture when the Senate first adopted the rule in 1917?
51
60
64
67
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That was before Roe v. Wade, before the Christian Coalition, before evangelicals made money and moved to the suburbs and "began to lose a sense of pessimism and alienation," says John Green, a professor of political science at the University of Akron. Now at a conservative convention young people line up to pray at the microphone. Now, says Souder, "the collective memory of all that tension is gone."
Souder's generation never outgrew the habit of tuning their résumés, approaching a non-church audience with caution.
Even Thune, a member of the new generation, used to omit from his official bio that he graduated from Biola, the Biblical Institute of Los Angeles. In his time the school was known for its fundamentalism, and didn't allow students to watch movies or dance.
John Ashcroft, son of a Pentecostal preacher, still avoids questions about whether he speaks in tongues. Whenever talking about his upbringing -- he never drank or danced, and remained a virgin until he was married -- Ashcroft is either prickly or boastful, but always self-conscious. "It's against my religion to impose my religion," he'll often say. "But I've always hoped that if I were ever accused of being a Christian I'd be found guilty."
Lyric Hassler, the Hill aide in starched white blouses, was not long for the Christian ghetto. After college she took advantage of the two elite fellowships designed to cultivate this new generation of Christian leaders -- the Trinity Forum Academy and the Witherspoon Fellowship. She came in dreaming that she would one day stand before the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade; she came out a realist, a political professional.
On the Bush campaign Hassler thought she'd find people who all shared her perspective. What she found instead were conservatives, not her kind of Christians. The differences showed up after work. At happy hours the Christians stood out as the ones who had only one beer, not five. And they didn't date, the way anyone else understood the term. Lyric "dated" Jeff Hassler for five months, but they never kissed until they got engaged. "What planet are you from?" her boss said when she found that out.
Still, when her boss needed some advice about planning the religious ceremony at her own wedding, she asked Lyric. "We stood out a little," she says, "but not too much. Ten years ago she might have thought I was a total freak. But now she just thought I was a little weird."
Now Lyric and Jeff are married and live in Fairfax. Jeff works in Sen. James Inhofe's office, Lyric is a political consultant. They've stayed away from the usual evangelical megachurch -- "the music is awful" -- and instead joined Truro Episcopal in Fairfax.
"I used to think High Church was dead and empty," she says. But somehow watching the procession, seeing the choir and the vestments, singing those traditional hymns -- "I thought this is how church should be," she says. They still consider themselves evangelical, but not in style -- no "awful music," no Jesus-is-my-best-friend, no "Left Behind" books.
They think a lot about how much to shelter their family from a corrupt culture; home-schooling is a definite option. Sometimes they think about going to someplace more remote, where temptation is easier to keep at bay.
"But after life in Washington," Lyric says, "we couldn't very well just disappear."
bump
"We need to find out what they eat and drink in this neck of NC and start exporting it to the rest of the country..."
They eat chopped pork barbecue, that's what. And how I wish I could find it in other parts of the country.
Pence sounds great, obviously.
Given the review of pre-presidential bios, somebody name the one and only time (I'm pretty certain) a member of the U.S. House of Reps was elected president.
Santorum really ticked off social conservatives in PA by endorsing Specter in a race Specter barely won over a true conservative congressman in 2004.
James Garfield and Abraham Lincoln
Adams went the other way, from being President to a member of the House. I will be interested to learn which member of the House was able to move into the Whitehouse.
"They eat chopped pork barbecue, that's what. And how I wish I could find it in other parts of the country."
I grew up in Ga and moved to TX when I was 30. The first time I ordered in a BBQ joint in Dallas, they brought me beef brisket. I handed it back to the waitress and told her I had ordered barbeque. She looked at me with cold steely eyes like I was nuts and said, "I brought you barbeque." (emphasis intended) That was the first time in my life that I ever knew people barbequed beef.
Now that I am over the age of sixty and have probably consumed as much or more "barbeque or barbecue" than maybe any other living mortal, I consider myself as an authority on the subject. My conclusion is that God made cows for practice. When he learned how to get it right; he made pigs.
After that, he taught Georgians how to make hash. Next time you are in Savannah, eat at Johnny Harris's and order a large bowl of hash. Tell em that I sent you and while you're there, check out the picture of President Reagan and Johnny.
The best commercial sauce is currently no longer available. It is Blackburn's Barbecue Sauce made in Jefferson, TX. Ever now and again, I call the Blackburn Syrup company on the outside chance they'll start producing it again. I offered to buy the rights to it, but they said I'd have to kill somebody to get it.
The best pork ribs are in Eagle Lake, TX. The son of the man that own's Austin's Grocery Store cooks on Thurs, Friday and Saturday and serves in the closed gas station next door until he sells out. If you are lucky, he may cook enough on Saturday that he will open on Sunday.
The best barbeque I have ever been privileged to eat was Smitty's on the Sand Bar Ferry Road in Augusta, Ga. Smitty died a number of years ago and the place closed up. He had a young grandson that used to help out when he was boy. Unless the grandson has taken up the business, Smitty's 'know how' may have died with him. My deceased brother-in-law made the best hash, but no matter how much I begged, the SOB wouldn't share the recipe with me. Smitty certainly deserves to be in Heaven so I figure regardless of what I deserve, there is an eternity of good barbeque in my future.
Pence is a good option on the conservative ticket, but approval of this plug for Pence that puts down Santorum and George Allen sets a dangerous stage.
This type of politicking plays right into the hands of the liberals who seek to divide the conservative party.
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