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These votes don't make me happy, but they don't bother me enough to vote against Mr. Hunter. Some of them, like "no child left behind" and the "Medicare drug benefit," may be primarily an example of aligning with the party and president out of party loyalty. Flaws like those are flaws in the party. While I think the country would be stronger if more Republicans followed Ron Paul's example and just voted "No" on things that are stupid ideas, a Congressman following the party on issues like these doesn't disqualify him in my eyes.

Does anyone remember when NAFTA was being debated? I remember all of those people saying that NAFTA would cause an economic boom in the Mexican states south of our border. That economic boom was supposed to solve our illegal immigration problem by creating so many jobs that none of the Mexicans would bother to come to our country. That prophecy didn't exactly come true (/heavy sarcasm). Duncan Hunter's vote on NAFTA looks pretty good in hindsight.

The Club for Growth and CATO groups are economically conservative in the sense that they want to promote whatever big business wants. They want to make it easy for big businesses to dump $12 an hour workers in the U.S.A. in favor of $2 an hour workers somewhere else. (Strangely enough, they never seem all that interested in seeing these same companies dump $12 million a year executives in favor of $2 million a year executives.) They ignore the fact the winner of every major war over the past one hundred fifty years has been the side with the stronger domestic manufacturing sector. I agree with these groups that government spending needs to be much lower, but their overall perspective on what's good for the country is narrow to the point of being wrong.

In any case, I'm glad to see someone offer a more substantive criticism of Mr. Hunter than the shallow favorite "Oh, he can't win." I don't believe that the favorite "can win" candidate can really win, but if we looked at candidates based on their records, the things they advocate, and what they hope to do in office, we'd have a chance to talk about where this country needs to go and how to get there. I also think we'd have a different set of front runners for the nomination.

Bill

The phoney charge against Hunter being another Cunningham is just bogus. I've seen nothing to indicate he was tied into Cunninghams bribery. Just the opposite. Hunter has been investigated and there is no there, THERE!

Cunningham got in trouble because he and his staff were taking gifts and bribes.

All anyone has to do is look at the disclosures of Hunter and his staff and the gifts they got!

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/travel.asp?CID=N00006983
Travel Financed by Special Interests: 2006 Cycle

Total Number of Trips 1

Number of Trips by MEMBER 0

Number of Trips by STAFF 1

Total Cost $600.00

DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)
Personal Financial Disclosures Summary: 2005

Agreements for Future Employment: 0

Compensation: 0

Gifts Received: 0 (Amount: $0)

Payments to Charitable Organizations
in lieu of Honoraria: 0 (Amount: $0)

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pfds.asp?CID=N00006983

Brent Wilkes is the guy tied to Cunningham:

"After Wilkes broke from Audre and started his own firm, Duncan Hunter continued to support Audre’s software against Wilkes’s. Thereafter, Wilkes started donating to Cunningham."

http://recoveringliberal.com/?page_id=609