Tag: Newt Gingrich

Stealing a post

My original intention was to write a very short post highlighting an excellent, well-documented piece on Human Events by Newt Gingrich regarding the specter of reconciliation – after all, he’s been in Congress so I would have to defer to his expertise on the subject. I don’t always agree with Newt but I’m a fan and the man has a pretty good understanding of history.

But in looking for the actual website for the above link (I get the Newt Gingrich Letter in my e-mail so I don’t necessarily go to Human Events all the time) I found an op-ed by Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Eric Wargotz detailing his trip to Massachusetts during the exciting final days of Scott Brown’s campaign.

What I found most interesting was that Eric didn’t pull any rank during the visit, going out and slogging in the trenches like hundreds of other political volunteers. Having done petition drives in the cold and snow of January in Ohio for a candidate who wasn’t even in my district, lit drops and door knocking in October’s chill, and working the polls on a number of raw and rainy Election Days both here and in my native area I could relate.

And while Eric didn’t have the chance to hang around to savor Scott Brown’s eventual victory, there is a thrill for those of us who are political junkies as the elections draw closer.

Yet it’s both political junkies and agnostics who can make a difference in the battle over health care. Newt’s article is important because he describes the process which either health care bill needs to go through in order to be passed. Aside from a few small cracks here and there, the GOP wall of opposition has held fairly firm over the last many months these Obamacare proposals have been debated (remember, the original goal was to have health care done by last August’s recess.) With Frank Kratovil being considered as one of the possible key votes on the current reform packages being considered, it’s very important to let him know his original opposition should stand.

Unfortunately, none of the phone calls and e-mails beseeching them to “just say no” to Obamacare are likely to dissuade our two United States Senators from toeing the liberal Democrat line and voting in its favor. Since Barbara Mikulski has put aside those rumors she was calling it a career, the national GOP will likely not invest much time or effort into the Maryland Senate race. (Too bad, because the money they wasted on Dede Scozzafava may have come in handy here.)

It just so happens that Wargotz is hosting an online “Mikulski Retirement Party” (it’s really a ‘money bomb’ fundraiser) tomorrow. That’s an idea borrowed from the Brown campaign too, and if it works half as well as Scott’s he’ll gain an even larger financial advantage over his two main contenders. (He had a huge cash-on-hand advantage on Jim Rutledge at the end of 2009, but Wargotz’s pot was less than 1/10 the size of Mikulski’s. Carmen Amedori has just entered the race so she has no FEC reporting data yet.)

Right now we have to play the hand we were dealt in 2008, though, so it’s up to us to convince the jokers we have to vote in our country’s best interest and scrap this health care debacle once and for all.

Republicans divided

At a time when the political winds should be at their back the Republican Party may be ill-poised to make the electoral gains conventional wisdom and history dictate they should at this fall’s midterm elections.

Nowhere was this more evident than at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, better known by the acronym CPAC. One case in point: Rep. Ron Paul, who showed outstanding fund raising ability but few votes in the 2008 Presidential campaign, won 31% of the vote in a straw poll of preference for the 2012 Presidential nomination. The 76 year old Texas Congressman beat out such luminaries and former candidates as Mitt Romney (who had won the previous three CPAC straw polls), Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee was also critical of CPAC, an event he skipped for the first time in several years, noting that the gathering had taken a more libertarian turn and focused less on conservative social issues. He also pointed out that the numerous TEA Parties had taken some of the luster off CPAC – however, over 10,000 participants registered for the event, making its 37th edition the largest ever.

There’s no question the TEA Party movement, which began with rallies about a year ago and became popularized by a nationally televised rant from CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli, has affected the GOP over the last year. While these newly-minted political advocates helped secure Chris Christie’s and Bob McDonnell’s victories in their respective New Jersey and Virginia races for governor and financially put Scott Brown in a position to be elected to the Senate, they also created a rift in the New York 23rd Congressional District race, allowing a Democrat to win there for the first time in over a century. Certainly this movement has caused GOP Chair Michael Steele no shortage of headaches during the first half of his two-year tenure.

Of course, Democrats have taken notice and are attempting to use this rift to their advantage. In Nevada, embattled Senator Harry Reid received some help as a group billing itself as the Tea Party placed a candidate on the November ballot. Organizers of the actual TEA Party movement in Nevada claim they know nothing about candidate Jon Ashjian or the ten people who are listed as the Tea Party’s slate of officers. Yet the group obtained the required 250 signatures and filed the requisite paperwork under the Tea Party moniker. Reid needs the third-party assistance as recent polls show he trails two of the leading GOP contenders, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, by double-digits.

With a mindset of fiscal conservatism and dislike of President Obama’s agenda, those who comprise the TEA Party movement seem like the Holy Grail of supporters for the Republican Party. But many in the GOP establishment dislike the libertarian streak present among TEA Party participants while social conservatives like Huckabee fret their pet issues will continue to get short shrift. And TEA Party protesters themselves dislike many Congressional Republicans who supported unpopular Bush-era policies and entitlements, dismissing them as “Democrat-lite.”

Perhaps herding cats would be an easier task, but to win in November the Republicans will have to walk the tightrope of appeasing their existing base while integrating the TEA Partiers by appealing to their fiscal side. But TEA Partiers don’t mind the Republicans being the “party of no” because they fear the effect of President Obama’s statist policies, so standing firm in opposition and not heeding the siren song of “bipartisanship” with the unpopular Obama agenda may be the key to turning over Congress this fall.

Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

With a personnel change at LFS, apparently they are holding on to these for far less time. This cleared on Tuesday – tomorrow you get last week’s op-ed.