Tom McClintock: Conservative soothsayer or rigid idealogue?

Sacramento Bee ^ | 5/12/8 | Peter Hecht

[SmithL]

To his devotees, state Sen. Tom McClintock is a righteous defender of the Constitution and an unrepentant fighter for reining in government spending.

To his detractors, the conservative populist and revered orator is a lone wolf who refuses to bend even when his closest colleagues are preaching compromise.

"Lincoln said, 'I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true,' " said McClintock, a 22-year state lawmaker. "I have stayed true to my convictions."

McClintock, the Thousand Oaks lawmaker now running for Congress in Northern California's 4th District, is a man as consistent in his principles as he is complex in his politics and approach to governance.

During 14 years in the state Assembly and nearly eight in the Senate, McClintock's principles of limited government have led him to pass few pieces of legislation – even for a member of the minority party.

Yet he is famous for helping lead the charge to roll back the motor vehicle registration fee – or "car tax." He is hailed by deficit hawks for voting "no" on nearly every state budget and lauded by free-market advocates for resisting bills that intrude on the sanctity of private business.

Perhaps, above all, he is a fiscal doomsayer who lately has been proved correct.

Only a year ago, McClintock helped inflame renegade Republicans who held up the state budget for weeks. He sounded alarms that fellow Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was papering over a crisis of deficit spending.

Schwarzenegger is now warning that next year's state deficit could reach $20 billion. And one of McClintock's Democratic adversaries in the Senate, Mike Machado of Linden, said recently that McClintock "is the one who brought to everybody's attention the pending crisis we are facing today."

[lainie]

I think the problem was less 'people saying they would vote for McClintock and not following through' and more 'people participating in a beat-down of McClintock supporters.'

For reasons that were never really hashed out, such as... they were acting like party animals, agents of the political machine that pulls strings. Disloyal to their fellow conservatives, and definitely part of the problem. They were never made to admit it or pay a price for it, save for the price we're all paying.

Whatever happened to those FReepers? They're still here.

[Luke21]

This is an obvious hit piece from the Sac Bolshevik. I didn’t even bother counting the number of loaded words.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[SierraWasp]

One time I was seated with another elected official on one side of a resturant booth at a political function and Peter and another reporter were seated on the other side.

I asked Peter how he liked being seated in a booth populated with the proverbial "Scribes & Pharisees." Whenever he would interview me, he'd mention how we were both "taking the measure of the man." (as if he somehow knew how to measure men)

I think Peter thinks of himself as some kind of philosopher, rather than a mere reporter. But he's still far better than the BEE's rabidly militant "EnvironMental" reporter. He keeps thinking he's gonna git another Pulitzer Prize like the two dummies that wrote "Sierra In Peril" in the early '90's and actually did win such a phony prize.

One of those two wrote "Living Off The Fat Of The Land" in the early '00's which was very critical of the EnvironMental Vowell Movement which created a lively thread here on FR!!!

[CAluvdubya]

Sac-o-Bee continues campaigning against McClintock.

Isn't that the truth!

I hope that anyone that wants to get conservatives back in Washington, to counter the McCains of the party, start with supporting Tom McClintock.

I'm in San Diego now but I lived in Roseville for 20 years so I'm sending McClintock money. He's my grassroots! (I already have Brian Bilbray and I'll probably send Duncan D. Hunter money as well)

[afnamvet]

He has my vote and support as well. He will be my congressman too.

[afnamvet]

Some of us admitted we were wrong and did penance.

[Lancey Howard]

I read this piece and have to disagree with you. I don’t think it was a “hit piece” at all.
It came off fairly balanced, and even complimentary in some ways.

[calcowgirl]

Hecht called him a “fiscal doomsayer”... vs. a “tell it like it is truth-teller.” He said that “McClintock helped inflame renegade Republicans” to hold up the budget—instead of pointing out that those were not “renegades” but legislators that were not willing to defraud the public by ignoring the fiscal crisis a few feet in front of their noses, the same crisis that is hitting headlines today. Hecht reaches out to gadfly Tony Quinn to find a Republican to mock fiscal responsibility as “purist” “ideology.” He goes on to point out that he votes against “fuel-conservation and clean-air bills” implying that he is against the environment instead of acknowledging (or even mentioning) that many of those bills had nothing to do with conserving fuel or making the air clean. He says he has an “intolerance for wasteful spending” as if that is a bad thing!

The whole tone of the article struck me as an attempt to slime him and paint him as an extremist when those things he advocates are almost impossible to refute.

[Lancey Howard]

Thanks for your kind response.
You made many good points.