Boehner Gets it Right on Earmarks
Via NRO’s The Corner:
Boehner Says House GOP Must Draw Line On Earmarks Or Prepare For Permanent Minority.
House Minority Leader John Boehner used the first House GOP Conference meeting of 2008 to draw a very hard line on congressional earmarks. Boehner, who is one of the few Members of Congress who does not earmark, told his colleagues that if they cannot break out of that habit, they will not regain the majority. According to a knowledgeable source, Boehner told the Conference this morning, “Washington is broken. We need to show the American people we’re ready to fix it,” adding, “We aren’t going to earn the majority back until we do something serious about earmarks. If we don’t get serious about it, and get serious soon, we’re going nowhere.” The source said Boehner concluded by saying, “I have no interest in being minority leader just to be minority leader. I took this job to lead an effort to earn back our majority — this year. Not next year or the year after that. This year.”
These are the exact right words - now we’ll have to see if they are matched by deeds, and if a majority of the GOP caucus will show the necessary backbone to go along.
There were lots of reasons we lost our Congressional majority in 2006 but not least among these reasons is that we ceased to be the GOP, and started being Democrat-lite. This didn’t so much turn people towards the Democrats, but it did turn GOPers away from the GOP. We GOPers have to give people a reason for returning us to the majority - and that means we have to show that we are in deadly ernest in changing the way DC does business. Earmarks are not the only thing wrong in DC, but they are the perfect symbol of that confluence of money and influence-peddling which turns the stomach of all honest citizens. The Democrats will not - and cannot - clean up DC as their power is based largely upon appropriating government swag for favored groups, but we GOPers are supposed to be better than that. And we’ll have to be better than that, if we ever want to have our majority back.
7 comments January 17th, 2008
