I won’t shoot the messenger because John Fund is a great conservative journalist, and a friend. But talk being the bearer of ill tidings, the United States of America needs this news like it needs and outbreak of the measles.
In an entry by Fund today in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary, he reports that Congress Bill Thomas ("R" – Bakersfield) is looking at entering the competition to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader.
You have heard me talk a lot about the challenge of the Republican Party – that there are GOP majorities in both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, and there is a Republican in the White House. And still we continue to preside over the largest expansion of the federal government in the history of America.
Well, let me tell you, Bill Thomas is a BIG PART OF THE PROBLEM. I know that he tries to maintain some sort of ‘policy-wonkish’ center-right image inside of the Beltway. Don’t believe it — actions speak louder than words. Thomas has a decades long track record of supporting for office the kind of politicians who have never met a line in the sand that wasn’t meant to be crossed. I guess Thomas’ ersatz candidacy is going to cause me to have to write some prolific piece on this guy – I’d rather just see him ride into the Bakersfield sunset.
The message right now for anyone listening in DC: If there was a photo in the dictionary for the work "self-centered/ tempramental/ always-has-to-be-right/ deal-cutting/ faux-conservative."
Here is what Fund wrote:
Another prominent House Republican may be about to join the race to succeed Tom DeLay, who stepped down permanently as House Majority Leader over the weekend. Bill Thomas, the brainy and often bombastic chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, is contemplating running in the Feb. 2 election, which will be decided by a secret vote of the 231 House Republicans.
Mr. Thomas views the current frontrunners, Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt and Education Committee Chairman John Boehner, as too closely tied to the status quo. If he ran, according to former aides, he would likely garner enough support to ensure that no candidate wins the needed 50%-plus-one of the votes, thus forcing a runoff between the top two candidates.
First elected in 1978, Mr. Thomas doesn’t strike one as a fresh face, but his allies tell me he has given much thought to an agenda that would revitalize the fractious GOP caucus. Its centerpiece would be tax cuts and tax reform. Mr. Thomas recognizes that the one thing that keeps many voters voting Republican is hope for control of spending, starting particularly with restraints on pork-barrel special interest legislation.
"There is a niche between Blunt and Boehner waiting to be filled by a candidate," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells me. "I’m not sure Thomas fits that exactly, but someone who can plausibly argue that I’m experienced enough to have stature but unconventional enough to think in new directions would have a chance."
— John Fund