Posted on 12/04/2012 6:29:13 PM PST by neverdem
House Republican leaders used a secret criteria list to decide which conservatives to purge from powerful House committees, Breitbart News has learned. As this time, it appears they will keep the criteria list hidden from the public, too. Spokespeople for members of House GOP leadership have refused to discuss details about the list on the record with press.
Because GOP Leadership won't discuss the list, it’s unclear what specific criteria the list contained and how much of a role it played in the conservative purge. It’s also unclear which member of House Republican leadership initiated this process.
In remarks to the Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing on Tuesday, Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp confirmed the existence of such a list.
“We’ve heard from multiple sources that someone walked in with a list of votes and said if you didn’t reach a particular scorecard of what was considered the right vote – which by the way, in most cases, was not the conservative position – then [they said] ‘we’re going to have to remove you from the committee,’” Huelskamp said.
“All that took place behind closed doors, which is again a problem with Washington, D.C. – whether it’s the budget negotiations, whether it’s everything else, it’s usually done behind closed doors," he explained. "I think, as conservatives, this is where we can win: We’ve got to be willing and able to talk about things in public instead of being afraid of actual public scrutiny.”
Huelskamp later told Breitbart News he thinks House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Whip Kevin McCarthy owe it to the American people to be transparent about this decision making process – and that they should publicly release the list.
“In the name of transparency and openness, they most certainly should release the criteria,” Huelskamp said in...
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Not surprisingly, just about everyone I speak with is in the same frame of mind.
They are in league with the democrats, not in opposition.
We've had enough of theater-caliber acting from RINOs. The ousting of conservatives this week and pre-election Tea Party distancing confirm the demise of the republican party as we once knew it is in real-time progress.
There is no democrat-lite party, contrary to Bohner and RINOs fantasies. They should just make the political leap and change parties. Colin Powell already admits to voting democrat.
Thanks for the link.
RINO File.
Sorry to hear you are going to watch, just think if old George Washington had decided to “watch”?
Me I’m 61, have health problems, but I’d rather die on my feet then serve on my knees.
So after they have taken everyone away and they come for you who will help you?
BTW-your attitude is what got us here in the first place.
Pretty obvious since LBJ, Left foot, Right foot, down the road to global totalitarianism.
I’d rather die on my feet then serve on my knees.
Talk is cheap. 99% of folks who say this in strength will roll over and show their bellies when a fed SWAT team busts in their doors at 0300HRS and holds an H&KMP5 to the heads of their grandchildren or wife.
They'll be coming for me in the first wave of sweeps. My popcorn and chocolate illustration is more of a fantasy than fact. My history of activism as well as my affiliations puts me on several lists. The worst of them in the eyes of the oppressors would be former US Army Infantry Captain and NRA certified Firearms Instructor for the last quarter century. What happens when they show up will depend on the circumstances of the moment. But I'm sure not going to be beating my chest and screaming about dying on my feet rather than living on my knees. That's an empty rant.
Write a strongly worded letter, on the computer, and e mail it, sure to make waves and get "them" to listen, lol.
Then there is always the online petitions, a useful tool for bending behavior of pols.
Ooh ooh, join an on line political action website and treaten to withhold your vote unless the pol is pure and 110% in line with your very well balanced and thoughful political world view...
Naturally, all of this can be done while sipping chocolate and consuming large quantities of popped corn!
'course, you may get branded a traitor to the cause for not inflating your chest as you type in very manly scenarios in which you would gladly hold off the hordes of govt thugs with your arsenal of stuff which you cleverly fooled said thugs into thinking that you lost your stuff during your fishing expeditions.
One of my favorite forms of resistance is to start a 3rd, 4th and 5th party, and garner 51,000,000 votes based on principle (mine, naturally), then, THEN, I, we, can sow them wo is boss and in control. Oh yeah!
However, we don't do this thing soon, we will need to joint the walker brigade and learn to shoot off hand while sitting, in a wheel chair.
/s
I remember reading some campaign material put out by Richard Nixon in his 1972 campaign in which he said, when targeting college students in his appeals, that he had managed to bring the defense budget under 50 percent of the total federal budget.
Defense spending isn't anywhere close to that level today. Social welfare spending and entitlements have become a steadily increasing percentage of the budget, along with payments on the national debt and the ticking time bomb of Social Security.
That is wrong.
Most of what the federal government does today either should be done by the states and cities, or should be done by private individuals and organizations, or shouldn't be done at all.
By contrast, providing for the common defense is virtually the only big-dollar item on which the federal government has the primary role under our Constitution. The federal government has other constitutionally prescribed functions, of course, but most of them do not cost anywhere close to what defense costs.
Obviously there is waste in the defense department. I live outside a major Army installation and I could tell horror stories. I think putting together a committee of angry first sergeants could generate billions of dollars in defense cuts due to waste, fraud and abuse, and creating a committee like that is a program I could get behind.
What the Democrats want is something entirely different, not fixing defense but gutting defense.
He's a relatively recent congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., where I used to live. He's a firebrand but I'm afraid he's been setting the wrong fires.
I've been out of Michigan for more than a dozen years (though I have many ties there), but I now have a new reason to be interested. My congresswoman in Missouri, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, was appointed to one of the positions from which Amash and others was removed on the House Budget Committee. I have problems with Hartzler, but on social issues she is a rock-solid conservative and led the fight in Missouri against homosexual marriage.
I want to withhold judgment on the details of Rep. Amash because I haven't followed his career closely, but on the broad picture, I think it's fairly clear he does not represent the socially conservative voters of Michigan's Bible Belt.
He's not the first case of that, unfortunately. A congressional district as socially conservative as those found in West Michigan, if it were in South Carolina or Mississippi or Texas, would be sending firebrand right-wingers to Congress on a crusade to kill liberal programs and godless wickedness along with them.
That simply has not been the case in West Michigan despite demographics which are clearly ripe for a right-wing conservative Christian candidate, as long as his name is VanderSomething to attract Dutch voters. Conservative Christians do get elected to local offices and the state legislature in West Michigan, but for some reason that doesn't get translated into success in Congressional races.
Some of that isn't too surprising, historically — this is Jerry Ford's old district, after all.
Ford made a career out of being a moderate and successfully keeping radical conservatives under control by giving them some of what they wanted, running things by consensus rather than based on core ideological principle. I know from experience how Ford worked hard to keep the Dutch business leaders happy, knowing they'd keep their Christian Reformed and Reformed Church in America pastors under control, and thereby prevent too many problems coming out of the pews. Ford faced one serious revolt over Christian education, and he ended up co-opting the leaders of the revolt by getting them involved in mainstream Republican Party politics.
That was a really smart move on Ford's part, and it was typical of how he operated, knowing that conservatives get really angry but once the anger subsides, they generally don't have the staying power to mount a successful long-term campaign to get rid of someone.
More recently, the Dutch Reformed have actually been operating the levers of power rather than being co-opted by mainstream Republican leaders. The problem has been that the wrong Dutch people were pulling the levers, people who no longer represented the core conservative Christian commitments of their heritage.
Here are two examples.
Rep. Amash’s predecessor, Rep. Vern Ehlers, was a member of one of the most liberal congregations in the Christian Reformed Church. He was a bookish former college science professor, not a fighter for conservative causes. His predecessor, Rep. Paul Henry, was the son of noted evangelical leader Carl F.H. Henry, and a member of a powerful and (at the time) fairly conservative downtown Christian Reformed congregation. Personally I liked Rep. Henry and didn't have a problem with him, but he was regarded as simply “too nice” by a lot of hard-core conservatives.
Pay attention, guys. This is a case study in how conservatives get co-opted by mainstream Republican elements. My guess is that if the national GOP gets sick and tired of Amash, they'll find a reasonably compliant pro-life conservative Christian candidate to run in the primary against Amash. The core demographics of his district do not support Amash’s positions and that makes him vulnerable.
Christie at the beach, do you think defaulting on the debt is a real solution?
IMO, the House should have passed a “metered” debt limit increase, which would have gradually increased the debt limit, month by month, by large enough to prevent default, but small enough to keep the squeeze on for fiscal responsibility. But to oppose ANY debt limit increase at all is completely irresponsible.
Well sir, let me just say, I and you will be on the same side of the barricade, hopefully you will remember enough to train others.
I was not pounding my chest.
“A people unwilling to use extreme violent force to obtain or preserve their liberty deserves the tyrants that rule them.” Franklin
As an NRA certified Firearms Instructor these last 25 years, I have trained many MANY others. A lot of them have come back to me after their basic concealed firearms permit classes, to request other sorts of training that are of a more ... specialized nature shall we say...
No hard feelings....
My daughter was on a NRA rifle team in High School in VA, she trained with Gunny Sgt, Quantral of the Marine sniper team.
No hard feelings...
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