Tag Archives: Eric Cantor

The Problem With Walking Down The Middle Of The Road Is That You Tend To Get Run Over

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Hot Air posted an article today about the New Hampshire Senate primary. It seems as if Eric Cantor‘s defeat might have been the beginning of a trend. Scott Brown has been seen as the favorite to be the New Hampshire Senate candidate, but things may not be that simple.

The article explains:

One of the candidates, Karen Testerman, has dropped out of the race and tossed her support to former Senator Bob Smith…

Ms. Testerman made the following statement:

It is time for all of us to put aside pride and focus on our greater GOAL, that of fighting for Family, Faith and Freedom. I will not force our principle-driven primary voters to make a self-defeating choice. After much prayer and consultation, I will step aside to allow Senator Bob Smith to be the ONLY conservative name on the primary ballot.…

Senator Smith has a well-earned reputation of standing firm for our conservative beliefs and values and for fighting Washington to stop their overreach. Bob Smith was TEA Party before it had a name.

Scott Brown is a good man, but he has never claimed to be a conservative. He won the special election in Massachusetts to become the Senator to replace Ted Kennedy for two reasons–first of all, the Democrats did not see him coming and did not mobilize, second of all, he knocked on almost every door in the commonwealth and ran as the fifty-first vote against ObamaCare. The fifty-first vote didn’t work out because the Massachusetts Secretary of State delayed seating him in the Senate long enough so that he didn’t get to vote on ObamaCare, but that was the intention. The second time Scott Brown ran in Massachusetts, the Democrats threw everything they could at him to make sure he didn’t win. He didn’t have the support of the Tea Party and was totally outspent and outmaneuvered.

The New Hampshire Tea Party conservatives have never been a fan of Scott Brown. It is not a surprise that they would support a more conservative candidate.

At Least Some Of The Republicans Are Listening

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The defeat of Eric Cantor this week in a primary election in Virginia sent shock waves through the Republican leadership. It should have. The message was clear. Listen to your constituents or be voted out of office. However, the Washington establishment has forgotten how to listen.

The Hill posted an article today announcing that Representative Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) was running to replace the defeated Representative Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as House Majority Leader. The establishment Republican candidate is Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), currently the majority whip.

The article reports:

Labrador received support for his late-breaking bid Friday from a fellow conservative stalwart. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

In his endorsement, Amash said he could think of “no one more qualified to be our next leader” than Labrador. He also took aim at GOP leadership, arguing that Cantor’s stunning loss should be a lesson in caution for anyone eager to simply move McCarthy up the ladder.

“Washington Republicans can bury what happened last Tuesday with piles of excuses. But if they view Tuesday as an anomaly, they do so at their own peril,” he said. “We can’t respond to a stunning loss by giving a pat on the back and promotion to the same team. It’s time for someone new, someone conservative.”

Amash has repeatedly split with party leaders on a host of legislative issues, and is currently facing a primary challenger who has been boosted by business groups seeking to oust him.

This will be a test for the Republican party. The Tea Party (and the conservative movement) are not dead. Republicans and many Democrats are tired of Washington spying on them, intruding into their lives, and passing legislation that lowers their standard of living. The guilt falls on elements of both parties.

If you are tired of the non-listening establishment that has been running Washington lately, call your Republican house member and let him know that the promotion of the ‘next in line’ is not a good idea. It’s time for new people and new ideas.

 

The People vs. The Establishment

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The internet is abuzz this morning with interpretations and hand wringing over Eric Cantor‘s defeat in the Virginia primary.

The Washington Examiner reports:

One House Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Cantor’s loss was a “big win” for President Obama because it could empower the more hardline elements in the GOP and damage the effort on the part of some Republicans to broaden the party’s appeal to cross ethnic and gender lines. Cantor lost to college professor Dave Brat, who campaigned as an anti-immigration reform candidate and affiliated with activists and talk radio hosts who identify with the Tea Party.

I don’t see this as a win for President Obama–I see it as a win for people who are disgusted with ‘business as usual’ in Washington. Since when do we call people who believe in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment radicals? I think our founding fathers would turn over in their graves if they saw what has happened to the nation they birthed.

Elections are the way Americans can express their satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with their leaders. I think the Americans in Eric Cantor’s district just made their opinion very clear.

A Different Perspective

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On Monday, Peter Beinart posted an article at the Daily Beast about the recent government shutdown with a different perspective than we have heard in the past few days.

Mr. Beinart believes that the shutdown is a Republican victory. He states:

Republicans, being less supportive of federal spending on things like “education, energy and medical research,” were more supportive of the sequester. Indeed, as recently as last month, GOP leaders described locking in the sequester cuts—via a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) that extended them into 2014—as a major victory. In a memo to fellow Republicans on September 6, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor boasted that by “signing a CR at sequester levels, the President would be endorsing a level of spending that wipes away all the increases he and Congressional Democrats made while they were in charge and returns us to a pre-2008 level of discretionary spending.”

…It’s not just that Obama looks likely to accept the sequester cuts as the basis for future budget negotiations. It’s that while he’s been trying to reopen the government and prevent a debt default, his chances of passing any significant progressive legislation have receded. Despite overwhelming public support, gun control is dead. Comprehensive immigration reform, once considered the politically easy part of Obama’s second term agenda, looks unlikely. And the other items Obama trumpeted in this year’s state of the union address—climate change legislation, infrastructure investment, universal preschool, voting rights protections, a boost to the minimum wage—have been largely forgotten.

The end of the shutdown was not a Republican victory–generally speaking, they caved. However, if we have successfully moved the point of baseline budgeting back to pre-TARP levels, that is wonderful. For anyone who is not familiar with baseline budgeting, it is the procedure Washington used to increase spending while claiming that they have cut the budget. If a department’s budget was going to increase 10 percent and only increases 5 percent, that is considered a cut. They are still spending more, but it is considered a cut.

Fiscal responsibility should not be a political issue. Both parties need to realize that we cannot go on printing money forever. I am glad that the shutdown is over and that the World War II veterans will again be able to visit their memorial, but fiscal sanity needs to come to America.

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What Are Our Welfare Programs Encouraging?

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On Friday, Fox News posted the following video (also in YouTube):

So how is it possible to live on the generosity of the American taxpayer with no concept of working for a living? In September 2012, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air noted the impact of the 2009 Stimulus Bill on the Food Stamp Program. Included in the Stimulus Bill were changes in the welfare program that waived the work requirement and made it easier for people with no intention of working to collect benefits.

The article at Hot Air reports:

In addition to the broader work requirement that has become a contentious issue in the presidential race, the 1996 welfare reform law included a separate rule encouraging able-bodied adults without dependents to work by limiting the amount of time they could receive food stamps. President Obama suspended that rule when he signed his economic stimulus legislation into law, and the number of these adults on food stamps doubled, from 1.9 million in 2008 to 3.9 million in 2010, according to the CRS report, issued in the form of a memo to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

“This report once again confirms that President Obama has severely gutted the welfare work requirements that Americans have overwhelmingly supported since President Clinton signed them into law,” Cantor said in an emailed statement. “It’s time to reinstate these common-sense measures, and focus on creating job growth for those in need.”

This is the law that allows a beach bum in California to surf his life away and eat lobster on the money paid in taxes by families struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.

I think it’s time for Congress to grow a backbone and change the law back to what it was. That alone will save millions of dollars in federal spending.

 

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Will Congress Ever Have The Integrity To Pass A Law Requiring Its Members To Live Under The Laws It Passes?

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When America was founded, the idea was that average Americans would go to Washington to serve in government for one or two terms and then return to private life, living under the laws they had passed while in Washington. Unfortunately, that principle has gone the way of corsets and hoop skirts.

Yesterday Politico posted an article with the headline, “Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption.” Really? If it isn’t good enough for Congress, let’s repeal it on the spot. There is no reason to keep a law in place if Congress does not want to live under it.

The article reports:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

It is becoming very obvious that Obamacare is a mess. It is unfortunate that the Republicans have not come up with an alternative they could bring to the floor and pass to replace it.

The article reports:

Republicans, though, haven’t been able to coalesce around a legislative health care plan of their own, either. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pushed a bill this week that would shift funds from a health care prevention fund to create a high-risk pool for sick Americans. That bill couldn’t even get a vote on the House floor as conservatives revolted, embarrassing Cantor and his leadership team. GOP leadership pulled the bill.

Is there anyone in Washington who has a clue?

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Why The Deficit Cutting Supercommittee Won’t Work

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On Sunday, The Hill reported that Representative James Clyburn (S.C.) is vowing to use his position on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to tackle the nation’s enormous wealth gap.

The article reports:

Clyburn said he’ll be pushing for revenue raisers – not just cuts – in the next round in order to “secure our nation’s financial future in a fair and balanced way that requires shared sacrifice and creates opportunity for all Americans.”

There is a basic problem with this statement. We will never be able to eliminate poverty. We can try to make poverty more comfortable–food stamps, housing, etc., but we will never eliminate it.  Jesus, who seemed to have a pretty good idea of what human nature was like, stated in Mark 14:7, “For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good.” Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty more than forty years ago. We lost. What we have done has not worked, what is Representative Clyburn planning to do that is different?

What is responsible for the nation’s wealth gap? Part of it may be due to educational opportunities, but more of it is due to work ethic, ambition, attitude, values, etc. Unless you are willing to work on some of those areas, you will not change the wealth gap.

The article further reports:

While Democrats are insisting on tax-revenue increases as part of the package, Republicans are equally as adamant that they be excluded.

“We were not elected to raise taxes or take more money out of the pockets of hardworking families and business people,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote Monday in a memo to fellow Republicans.

There is a basic philosophic difference between the statements of James Clyburn and Eric Cantor. Eric Cantor understands that people who have wealth have generally worked hard to obtain it. Taking it away from those people will not make the poor any richer–it will make everyone poorer. Shared sacrifice does not work–it is not good for anyone.

Raising taxes in a recession is not a good idea. The Democrats stated in January when they extended the Bush tax cuts that raising taxes in a fragile economy was not a good idea. What has changed? The supercommittee is political theater. The problem is that when they fail, our defense budget will be stripped and we will pay a heavy price for that in national security. The defense budget is not our problem and low taxes are not our problem–it’s the spending, stupid!

If you truly want to tackle the wealth gap, lower everyone’s taxes, cut regulations, and tell everyone on welfare that the payments will stop in three months. At that point, the economy will grow!

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