Boehner and Ryan may have best strategy on budget battle after all

Soon after the new GOP-majority House convened in January, this column endorsed endorsed a “selective government shutdown” strategy in which congressional Republicans would pre-emptively prepare the public for what seemed to us an inevitable confrontation over government spending with the new party of “no”, i.e. status quo Democrats. Like Byron York, we think the political and economic landscape has shifted so dramatically since President Bill Clinton bested Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1995 version of this play, that we fear no shutdown; and, like Hugh Hewitt, we think it best to confront the issue of deficit spending and debt in the context of our domestic affairs rather than debt ceiling vote bluffs.

A month later, we are more convinced that a shutdown is inevitable given President Barack Obama’s “Louis XV budget” head-in-the-sand proposal and especially after ObamaDems have been talking of nothing else but a shutdown. However, we have become convinced that it is not necessary to aggressively pursue such a strategy immediately for a number of reasons.

Just now, the public is transfixed on another epic party-defining battle in Madison, Wisconsin, the images of which create more 2012 tea partier voters everyday the public witnesses elected Democrats fleeing Badger State Troopers for the Illinois border like Bonnie & Clyde after a bank robbery and the public sector unionists that now occupy their space at the State Capitol.

By all means let us get out of the Democrats way and let them bury themselves. No need to distract from free advertising when Speaker of the House John Boehner can issue a two-week continuing resolution that includes all of spending cuts that the President proposed in a vehicle that requires no compromises on the part of conservatives.

But the day is coming when the Drive-by media will film the crocodile tears of youngsters unable to see Old faithful a Yellowstone and the GOP needs to prepare for it, because any compromise that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would agree to in conference in conference and that the president would sign, would be a betrayal of last November’s biggest Republican election  since 1948.

I now think that the Speaker’s strategy of being hard on spending cuts but soft on any desire for a shutdown can be effective and that it may well be better if the day of reckoning is later in the year. It could well work to our advantage to spread out the misery for Obama. Right now, he sees the possibility of a lifetime of union community organizing for funding Democratic party campaigns going down the tubes at the hands of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:

“I just finished eight years as county executive in Milwaukee last December,” he told me during a telephone interview. “I’ve dealt with unions and angry legislators. I know anytime you challenge the status quo you have to be bold—and take the heat.”…the proposal would require that public-employee unions berecertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those who cast ballots. The bill would also end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. “If workers have freedom of choice on their own dues money and a real voice in their union,” the governor says, “they may get better representation.”

Had House Republicans had the guts of Walker, they would have added de-fundings of total ObamaCare, NPR, CPB, and the Legal Services Corporation to the aborting of Planned Parenthood. But they can still redeem themselves if they will listen to We the People as the Speaker promised. So far, tea partiers have moved Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) even further  to the right on a number of spending cut issues and the way is clear for conservatives to own the economic issue going in to the 2012 election.

The GOP must resist compromises that would let the Democrats off the accountability hook. One reason for the massive 2010 victory was GOP unity in 2008-9 against most all of the ObamaDemagenda. That same kind of unity these next two years can giveconservatives control of all of the levers of power to truly reverse the Big Government slouching towards Gomorrah.

Moreover, with the oil-rich Middle East in turmoil and gasoline prices on the rise even more rapidly than they already were beforeMubarak fell in Cairo, the GOP should float a proposal naming the price for either avoiding a shutdown or for ending it once it starts:ObamaDems will stop their 30+ year incremental shutdown of the domestic oil and coal industries and consequent attack on the poor, middle class and national security, and we’ll let some of their meddling regulators collect their severance pay.

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor – The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

www.devinelawvista.com