It seems to me like Senate and House Republicans in Washington, D.C., have a tremendous challenge ahead of them. If I had to give it a title, I would call it, "Mending the Credibility Gap."
When you are the party in power, you have to govern. This means that you move beyond the world of rhetoric, and you actually have to enact policy. I believe that a large part of the reason why Republicans their majorities in the Senate and the House in this last election was because a lot of core Republican voters had finally stopped mustering up the support to re-elect Republicans who were long in rhetoric about limited government, but who presided over unprecedented growth in the size and scope of the federal government.
According to Ed Fuelner, the President of the Heritage Foundation:
Federal lawmakers have found other ways to insert themselves into what should be local issues. Since President Bush took office, lawmakers have larded spending bills with more than 35,000 earmarks, including such wasteful measures as $223 million for the Bridge to Nowhere and $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa.
Earmarking is nothing more than an attempt by members of Congress to show folks that they’re “bringing home the bacon.” Conservatives should focus on the lesson of this election: This sort of federal spending is wrong. It doesn’t work, and it should be stopped.
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November 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Good take, Jon. I can’t speak for my fellow voters or precinct walkers east of the Mississippi, but we did our part to GOTV here in CA – with the result that Arnold was overwhelmingly reelected and we’ve finally got a credible Insurance Commissioner. So, I differ on whether “core Republican[s]” stayed home; I think they just voted for whom they wanted to and unfortunately that was not always our nominees. If not and why not is the lesson that needs exploring.
Along those same lines, I’d hoped that Pence would be the new Minority Leader, but Boehner beat him by a large margin, as did Blunt over Shadegg. Again, did our elected reps really provide the kind of change we need? Still, I’m willing to be a good soldier, but I’m not going to muffle the sound from the trenches: the troops need leaders they can trust to do things ethically and aggressively. I hope Boehner realizes that, or like Pelosi, if she fails to learn from her stinging defeat on Murtha, neither will be leading very long.
Oh yeah, now it can be told: GO RUDY!