Another pickup opportunity in a red state has presented itself for conservatives. We must choose wisely. Jeff Fortenberry is the most liberal member of an underperforming delegation in the conservative state of Nebraska. With Mike Johanns retiring his seat in 2014, Fortneberry is considering a bid for his seat. Well, conservatives should consider his voting record. In 2011, he voted along with leadership for the | Read More »
In one of the last votes of 2012, the Senate passed Obama’s bloated Sandy “relief” bill (H.R. 1) 62-32. The $60.4 billion price tag makes this the most expensive disaster aid bill on record. It’s full of special interest projects that have nothing to do with the emergency, as witnessed by the fact that 64% of the funds will not be spent until FY 2015. | Read More »
The purge of conservatives from key committees last week was not a natural disaster. It was perpetrated by leadership with the help of the rest of the 31 members on the Steering Committee. They all need to hear from us. Let’s take a step back and analyze what occurred last week. It is not a normal occurrence for incumbent members in good standing to be | Read More »
The House just completed work on another FY 2013 spending bill; the Transportation-HUD Appropriations bill. This is a unique appropriations bill because most of the underlying content is an anathema to conservatives. A good part of transportation (highway spending) should be within the purview of state governments; mass transit spending should be eliminated; HUD should be abolished altogether. As you can imagine, the open floor | Read More »
Every Republican swears up and down that he/she supports limited government, a balanced budget, and free markets. Yet, once again, only a fraction of Republicans in Washington were able to stand for those ideals. The House and Senate passed the Obama highway bill/student loan stimulus on Friday with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. [Read more about the bill here and here.] Among other things, | Read More »
In what was supposed to be a snoozer election night, a little known conservative candidate, Jim Bridenstine, came out of nowhere to unseat 10-year veteran John Sullivan in conservative Oklahoma District 1. He did so by a 7-point margin, even though he was outspent 4-1 and nobody gave him any hope of succeeding. Even among many politicos who woke up to read about this astonishing sleeper | Read More »
Yesterday, Erick mentioned a revolutionary one-stop website designed to hold Republican House members accountable for their voting records. The Madison Project unveiled ConservativeVotingRecords. Com, which houses a simple yet novel index that compares the voting records to the ideological bent of the member’s district. The results are not pretty. 52 members who hail from solid Republican districts scored 20 points below where they should be | Read More »
Today is the calm before the storm of next week when conservatives will be involved in the marque fight of the cycle; Ted Cruz vs. David Dewhurst in Texas. Nonetheless, there are primary elections in Arkansas and Kentucky today that will provide us with a couple pickup opportunities. Arkansas-4 Blue Dog Mike Ross is headed back to the Democrat kennel, creating a prime pickup opportunity | Read More »
People often ask me what can be done to move the elected officials within the Republican Party rightward. Well, for one thing, we need to elect more conservatives. But more importantly, we need those conservatives to obtain positions of power, such as chairmanships of the committees that set our domestic policy agenda. Not surprisingly, all the relevant committee chairmen are either conduits for leadership or | Read More »
It appears that the grandfather of Obamacare is slated to become the Republican nominee for president. There’s not much we can do in the realm of presidential politics except hope that the new page on the Etch A Sketch will be better than the old one. At present, the most consequential thing we can do as conservatives is to follow the congressional elections in every | Read More »
Well, the first comprehensive conservative report card of Congress is out, and we can now determine which members of the “Tea Party Congress” drink a hardcore brew. Today, Heritage Action for America released their legislative scorecard for the pre-recess 1st session of the 112th Congress. Unlike most other scorecards, this one was designed to separate the men from the boys. Most traditional scorecards, and most | Read More »
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