In response to my post debunking one of the main Republican establishment myths, Ramesh Ponnuru claims that I joust with phantoms by “doing battle with someone he calls by my name but has very different views.” Yet he moves the goal posts in three ways that suggest those phantoms might be too close to reality for his own comfort.

First, Ramesh now admits there was, “some slippage on the right but not a huge amount.” That was not stated in his original article.  However, he continues to sell the data short. He keeps focusing on the presidential year of 2004. But let’s compare off-year elections, apples to apples. As Ramesh notes, in the bad year of 2006, conservatives voted 78% for Republicans and made up 32% of the electorate. Compare with the strong year of 2010, in which conservatives voted 84% for Republicans and made up 42% of the electorate. A six point differential, even when less of the electorate is conservative, is significant.

Second, Ramesh now concedes that at least some of this slippage may in fact have been due to “Republican squishiness.” I never argued that the 2006 election hinged “exclusively” on spending and limited government concerns. I pointed out that the independent voters that Republicans lost in 2006, cared a great deal about excess spending, and that it impacted their opinion of Republicans. I also suggested that Ramesh was wrong–by constantly conflating conservatives with Republicans and by drawing such a stark distinction between conservatives and independents–to conclude that big Republican government had nothing to do with the 2006 election losses.

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Ramesh Ponnuru, one of the more respected pundits of the establishment right, recently penned a widely-circulated article that took issue with the notion that Republicans lost their way during the Bush years to their political detriment. He argued that conservatives have created a false narrative, based on a bad reading of history, that “ideological purity, especially on spending, had caused those [electoral] losses,” in 2006 and 2008. As a result, the party continues to lose more than it should and is failing to focus on the “real problems” facing the country.

This is an odd bit of revisionist history coming from someone known to be on the right, especially since the implicit lesson for Republicans is to be less ideologically pure and move to the center. Yet, it is interesting that Ramesh claims that “this consensus still moves the party.” It doesn’t.

Ramesh cites various high-ranking Republican leaders as repeating the cliché that “we lost our way.” With the exception of Mike Pence (who first crafted the words “we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way”) and Paul Ryan of the leaders he cites, Ramesh would be pleased to know that this is not actually the consensus that moves them. It is largely lip service. If you sit in their leadership meetings and if you analyze their strategic decisions and the sorts of candidates backed by the party bosses, you realize fairly quickly that Ramesh and the Republican Establishment are of one mind on this question.

I suspect that Ramesh is fully aware of this fact, and thus his article reads more as a thinly-veiled critique of the Tea Party Movement and its allies than of the Republican Party as a whole. For instance, he says, “In Colorado and Nevada, conservative primary voters rejected two electable, conventionally conservative candidates because they were considered part of the compromising establishment.” I’ll return to CO and NV later, but who were those pesky “conservative primary voters” who overturned the will of the National Republican Senatorial Committee? Of course, they were Tea Party voters and their allies. So let’s be clear about who is in the dock, and who is not.

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With much fanfare in the midst of their campaign to take back control of the House of Representatives, House Republicans unveiled their Pledge to America. Many conservatives thought it was an enormous missed opportunity to lock a new Republican majority into a bold reform agenda. But House Republicans said that they wanted to under promise and over deliver. Who knew their conservative critics would end up being the keeper of their low expectations?

Unfortunately, Leadership’s commitment to their Pledge deteriorated quickly upon taking control. The Pledge called for a $100 billion cut in nondefense spending, but since this was going to be too hard in an abbreviated fiscal year, they decided to “prorate” that amount. Conservatives at the Republican Study Committee fought their Leadership and got them closer to $100 billion, but not all the way.

However, the Pledge also promised to transform the way the House of Representatives as an institution would be run. They promised to end the practice of packaging spending bills and other related legislation into so-called “omnibus” bills. Specifically, House Republicans pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.”

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Harry Reid just went there.

In a stunning parliamentary move, Reid invoked the infamous “nuclear option” this evening on the Senate floor to bar Republicans from getting votes on amendments without Reid’s permission. In short, he used a simple majority to do an end run around the rules of the Senate that make it the greatest deliberative body in the world.

Here is what is going on. Harry Reid brought a bill to the floor to impose protectionist sanctions on China. He didn’t want anyone to offer any amendments all week that were uncomfortable for his Democrat Senators, even though it is a key feature of the Senate to be able to force votes on any matter that a Senator deems important. In order to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on the President’s new stimulus plan, Reid used his ability as the Majority Leader to “fill the tree” by offering meaningless amendments that served only to block Republican amendments. Republicans figured out a way to get around him by offering procedural motions (instead of formal amendments) that would require 67 votes to pass but would secure the roll-call vote to get Democrats on the record.

The GOP manuever fit perfectly within the rules of the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian said so. Reid responded by having the Senate overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling. He won his appeal by a vote of 51 to 48 and thereby changed the rules of the Senate by simple majority. Senate rules are supposed to require 67 votes to be changed. This was the nuclear option long contemplated by Republicans in response to Democrats’ blockade of conservative judges, but was never used, in part because of what it would mean to the Senate’s future as a deliberative body. It was feared that it would ruin the filibuster.

Harry Reid pulled the trigger on a bill that had every chance of passing the Senate. Senate Republicans did not have the votes to stop it, so all that was in jeopardy was Harry Reid’s patience and his party’s comfort over having to take a tough vote.

The filibuster is still intact, but by invoking the nuclear option with regard to these Republican motions, Reid has established a precedent that will work to it’s long-term ruin. That is not a good thing for conservatives. I understand that many want the filibuster to go away when conservatives are in control and trying to pass important policy. But the filibuster is about securing a minority’s right to be heard. A government that allows the majority to trample the rights of a minority loses its legitimacy to govern. The majority isn’t always right, and the Senate has always been one of our nation’s most enduring checks against its tyranny.

The Senate as a deliberative body took a major hit tonight. And all because Harry Reid lost his cool and didn’t want to vote on his own President’s stimulus plan.

I feel like a broken record, but it is just very hard to give some people the benefit of the doubt. It is one thing after another, day after day. House Republican Leaders are on a crusade to cave with the President.

Never mind that in the opinion of nearly every main stream political analyst the President is on the ropes. My inbox is flooded with news articles about his declining popularity in blue states and the aftermath of this week’s GOP special election victories. But House Republicans modus operandi is still to avoid the fight.

This week, it was their insistence on a continuing resolution (CR) at levels far above the Paul Ryan-House passed budget in order to align with the bad debt deal they passed earlier in the year (because they were unwilling to fight). Then it was their shadiness in passing a six-month highway extension at levels far above the same Paul Ryan-House passed budget without a roll-call vote. They’re only now beginning to criticize the President’s new stimulus plan such that the President’s only glimmer of hope is that the public still doesn’t know how bad or unworkable it is. Why? Because Republicans are afraid of being the party of no. I thought we put that meme to bed last year.

And now we find that tucked into the recently unveiled CR is the provision to bail out the Postal Service, which I wrote about yesterday. Who knows what else is in there.

The bailout is terrible policy, and it completely cuts the legs out from under Darrell Issa, Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. (Whatever happened to deferring to committee chairmen?) But what is most troubling is what it illustrates about the state of Congressional Republicans.

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Most Americans by now have heard via numerous press accounts that the United States Postal Service (USPS) is on the brink of default in the absence of Congressional action. Now this does not mean that the mail system is going to shut down all of a sudden. It means that the Postal Service will violate the law by not making its $5.5 billion debt payment to taxpayers for the unfunded liability of providing federal healthcare benefits to its workers. Accordingly, USPS is asking Congress to both relieve them of this payment (a bad idea and something conservatives have fought for years) and untie their hands to cut some of their costs (a good thing). Fortunately, Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee with jurisdiction, is fully engaged with trying to prevent the former and pursue the latter.

Issa deserves tons of credit. It is a thankless task to try and reform the Postal Service when its threatening to shut its doors and every local postmaster is whining to their local congressman to forestall the doom. Furthermore, nobody comes to Congress with a burning passion to take on postal reform, and very few committee chairmen are willing to spend their political capital to reform programs within their jurisdiction in a manner that ultimately lessens their power. In fact, former chairmen like Tom Davis repeatedly put forward “reform” bills that were bailouts by another name, designed to placate the labor unions and corporations that benefit from artificially cheap mail.

Thankfully, Issa has said enough. He told his colleagues there would be no more bailouts and proposed reforms to allow USPS to shed costs and compete without federal assistance. But this promises to be a major fight, and it will be interesting to see how a Republican Congress handles this difficult political football.

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House Republican Leaders seem absolutely hell bent on violating their own budget. First they announce that the legislation or the “continuing resolution” to extend discretionary funding for the next fiscal year will exceed the House-passed, Paul Ryan budget resolution by $24 billion and line up instead with the sacred debt limit agreement.

Then we find out that a separate bill (H.R. 2887) to extend the federal highway and aviation programs for six months was rushed through the House this afternoon without even a recorded vote. The problem with this legislation was that it extends a broad set of transportation programs that the nation can no longer afford and which are in dire need of reform. It was a missed opportunity, and at the very least, the bill should have extended the programs at the level provided for in the Paul Ryan budget. Ryan’s budget—which almost every Republican Member voted for—included $27 billion for highways programs, about $15 billion less than was provided in FY 2011. In addition, H.R. 2887 lacked a formal cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, so its impossible to nail down the numbers for sure. Bills without cost estimates shouldn’t see the light of day in committee, let alone the floor of the House of Representatives.

After Heritage Action for America (in full disclosure, my employer) announced that it was key voting the legislation for precisely these reasons, Leadership quickly moved that the bill be passed without a roll call vote, meaning that Members had no chance to register their objection to the bill and activists would have no way to hold them accountable. Now every Congressman has the right to demand a roll call vote, and when a bad bill passes the full House by voice vote (or unanimous consent) they are ultimately responsible.  But these sort of games by the Leadership are an affront to all of the promises made during the campaign that the House would be run differently with more accountability and more transparency. Rank-and-file congressmen should expect more of their Leadership, and conservatives need to figure out a better way to monitor this from happening again.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), is taking massive heat from many of his own colleagues within the RSC for his public opposition to the Boehner debt deal. RSC staff is being called out by name for doing their job effectively. Calls are coming from all Leadershipistas to fire the RSC staff.

These members—such as Rep. Renee Ellmers (NC)—don’t like the fact that they are perceived on the wrong side of where the conservative movement ended up. Some are threatening to quit their membership in the House of Representative’s predominant conservative caucus.

If that’s what they think, they should submit their resignation—today.

I’d like to give everyone a brief understanding of what the RSC’s role is in Congress. I know because I worked there for over four years, served under three different RSC chairmen, with a two-year stint as its staff director.

The RSC is the conservative movement in the House of Representatives. It is not an arm of the elected House Leadership. It is not a cheerleader of everything that Leadership is doing. In fact, its job is to push Leadership as far to the right as is possible and flat out oppose it when necessary. As a result, Leadership often has a rocky relationship with whoever is the Chairman of the RSC because he or she is a political counterweight on whatever they are trying to do.

Now let me add a dynamic to the picture. A lot of—let’s be generous here—casually conservative Members of Congress like to join the RSC in order to be perceived back home as a 100% winger, but in reality, these Members are in the “Just Happy to Be Here” Caucus. They don’t fight, they often take bad votes if their Leadership wants them to, and when the RSC Chairman decides to fight, they often make his or her life absolutely miserable. Some threaten to quit the RSC. It is part of the territory.

In spite of all that abuse, and in spite of being from Ohio as Speaker Boehner is, Jim Jordan is proving to be one of the most effective Chairman in the history of the RSC. I know because I’ve worked for some of the others. Instead of being raked over the coals, he should be honored as a patriot.

Message to RSC Members who don’t like how the RSC is being managed: Get out.

Ronald Reagan once said that, “The closest thing to eternity is a government program.” Case in point: The Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, which has made most every conservative list of programs to eliminate over the last few decades.

The House Financial Services Committee—controlled by Republicans—recently passed legislation (H.R. 2072) to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank, which is nothing more than corporate welfare to corporations that export. It was passed without a recorded vote so we don’t know who would have opposed the legislation, but the voice vote does tell us that a sufficient number of conservatives did not mobilize against the legislation in committee.

In short, the Ex-Im Bank subsidizes lending (direct loans, loan guarantees, export credit insurance etc.) for American corporations that export and foreign corporations that purchase U.S. exports. H.R. 2072, authored by Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA), would extend the program for four years and increase the Bank’s exposure cap by 60 percent from $100 billion to $160 billion

Even though the Ex-Im Bank claims to be a self-sustaining institution that collects fees to cover its operating expenses and reserve obligations, federal taxpayers are still on the hook for potentially bad loans. Supporters note that the loans can only be made if there is a “reasonable assurance of repayment,” but of course, the individuals making these investment decisions are backed by the full, faith, and credit of the U.S.—not trying to ensure that their own hard-earned money gets enough of a return to allow them to stay in business. Lending standards inevitably slip. As Daniella Markheim has noted in calling for the elimination of the Bank, “U.S. government programs that subsidize risk offer above-market returns, in effect privatizing gains while potentially socializing losses.” Not to mention, any time you have a government institution making lending decisions there is a high risk of politics conspiring against the interest of taxpayers.

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There are a lot of bad policy ideas dreamed up on a daily basis on Capitol Hill, and many get turned into bills by Congressmen. Thankfully, most of these bills go nowhere. But occasionally, a policy streaker comes out of left field and makes a heady gambit for prime-time exposure and a floor vote in either the House or the Senate.

A bill often becomes “a streaker” when the number of its co-sponsors start ramping up rapidly, either because of a political interest back home in various districts, a well-heeled coalition of lobbyists, or the simple fact that members and their staff are not paying sufficient attention to a bill’s merits.

Rep. John Sullivan’s H.R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give America Solutions Act is a streaker, and it needs to be stopped. It has 179 cosponsors, nearly half of which are Republican. And when a bill begins to get this much bipartisan support, it makes it difficult for House Leadership to keep the bill off the floor.

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has called it the T. Boone Pickens earmark bill. It creates and expands a host of tax credits to subsidize the use of vehicles that run on natural gas, whether it’s the fuel, the purchase of a natural gas vehicle, the production of a natural gas vehicle, the infrastructure needed to fuel a natural gas vehicle, and so on. Of course, such tax incentives distort the market, complicate the tax code, insert the political class into the decision making process over whether natural gas is better than other forms of energy, and create a new class of beneficiaries reliant on the federal government to stay afloat. The bill also includes more than just tax subsidies. Section 401 of the bill directs the Department of Energy “to improve the performance and efficiency and integration of natural gas powered motor vehicles and heavy-duty on-road vehicles” through its current grant programs.

H.R. 1380 is nothing more than good old-fashioned corporate welfare. Members should oppose its passage. Members who have co-sponsored it already should remove their support (great job, Rep. Steve Pearce, for doing just that yesterday!). And overall, conservatives in Congress should be very clear that when they support an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, they mean to allow all-of-the-above energy to be tapped—not subsidized.

Crossposted at Heritage Action for America