In the upcoming special election in the 50th Congressional District, conservatives must come out to the polls and vote for Brian Bilbray.
Why is this, you ask? Bilbray has an iffy-record on holding the line on Congressional spending, he supports abortion rights, opposes traditional family values, earned himself a flunking grade from the National Rifle Association, and proudly is endorsed from a lot of the folks in Washington who are a part of our spending nightmare in Congress (Bilbray’s press release touting the endorsement of House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, famously dubbed the ‘King of Pork’ was an ominous foreshadowing of where Bilbray will fall in the ‘order of things’ in the House Republican Conference).
The reason for electing Bilbray, which is our reason for defeating Francine Busby (a flaming lefty)
, is to maintain a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. I don’t have to paint to big of a picture for you — just imagine the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Enough said.
As for Bilbray – as sad as this sounds, our hope for him rising up against the profligate spending in Congress really depends on whether his previous three terms in Congress, and how he voted while back there, were representative of his own deeply-held views (or lack of them), or whether (as countless people have tried to convince me) Bilbray really is quite a bit more conservative, but that the district he previously held was so competitive that he was ‘forced’ to cast bad votes. Well, as the Congressman from the 50th district, if Bilbray goes back to Washington and does more of the same, he will be decidedly out of step with Republicans in his "new" district – who are looking for a solid conservative voice in Washington, not a moderate. As I have said many times on this website, I have found that there is really no such thing as a social liberal who is an economic conservative.
Anyways, it is unfortunate for the Republican Party nationally that businessman Eric Roach decided, after much careful consideration, not to actively campaign in the regular primary for the 50th, which appears on the same ballot as the run-off for the special election. Conservative businessman Bill Hauf (who ran in the special, but whose performance was less than stellar – and that might be an understatement) told me that he is now actively considering a run (with a decision due tomorrow, I believe) and that might help gin up conservative voters. Right now, as you can read from this column, as conservatives, we are supposed to muster-up and vote for a ‘squishy’ GOPer (at best) to keep a Republican Majority in the House, when conservatives are unhappy with the track-record of that majority!
In the end, the best way for someone to win this seat is to run against the failed record of the GOP Congress, and run as an activist who will get to Capitol Hill, and fight to turn around the big-spending ways of the House and Senate Republicans, and put meaningful spending cuts on the President’s desk. (Yeah, the GOP Congress has done many good things, but the main grade comes from whether or not spending is down — and in our battle to limit the size and scope of the federal government, our GOP majorities in both chambers get an "F"). Somehow I am not sure that the RNC and the NRCC want to help finance a candidacy that is critical of their own majority. But until they figure out that they are losing conservative voters by playing a "The Emperor Has No Clothes" game, we are going to continue to alienate base Republican voters. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman showed that he knows that Congress isn’t doing what it needs to when he went over to Capitol Hill two weeks ago and told folks there that if they don’t get some results, our majority is in trouble.
But getting back to my first sentence — the reality is that in order to actually turn things around in Washington, D.C., two things have to happen. We need to make conservatives the dominant force within the Republican conference, driving our agenda (which is starting to happen with the surge of clout of the conservative Republican Study Committtee) — but we also need to have a Republican majority in the House. I am dubious about whether Bilbray will play a role in the first half of this equation (time will tell), but his election is certainly critical to the second half.
So, if you are a conservative voter in the 50th, I would go down and vote. Cast a ballot for Eric Roach (or Bill Hauf if he gets into the election) because it is the right thing to do, and while you are there, cast a vote against Busby on the other side of the ballot!
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