Serve, Don’t Dictate: Long-Time Conservative D.C. Insiders Need To Go
There’s an undeniable disconnect between the Washington elite and the conservative grassroots, as evidenced by recent elections. Washington insiders told us McCain skipping CPAC in 2007 was a huge strategic mistake, but it made no dent on his campaign. Political insiders funded Giuliani’s campaign to the tune of $60 million, and he won zero delegates. Despite spending a good deal of time campaigning in Iowa, Giuliani not only lost to Huckabee, Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain, but also Ron Paul.
Newt Gingrich pedantically scolded conservatives for not supporting Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional district, but it didn’t stop support from collapsing around her.
Pollster David Hill imagined that Mike Huckabee’s TV talk show would make him look breezy and unserious to Republican primary voters, yet as the year ends Huckabee is leading in Republican primary polls.
Look at the tea party movement. Despite the Democrats stating that the tea parties were astroturf, they’ve been anything but. They’ve been shows of everyday Americans who haven’t been involved in politics long enough to have a complete list of dos and don’ts. They’ve booed Republican bailout supporters John Cornyn and Gresham Barrett. The tea party folks also have their favorites: Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mn.) are huge. Bachmann got 10,000 people to show up in Washington on a few days notice.
How many could Norquist and Keene get with the same notice?
Former President George W. Bush reportedly believed he defeated the conservative movement when he defeated American Values president and 1999 CPAC straw poll winner Gary Bauer in the 2000 presidential race. However, the conservative movement is far stronger than its D.C. leadership. Forty percent of Americans describe themselves as conservatives, but to the average American that the beltway elite are supposed to be leading, they’d be as unknown as Larry Craig to the undercover Minnesota police officer.
Part of the problem is that many of these people have been in Washington far too long. While the ACU praises its history of supporting term limits, Mr. Keene has been at the helm of the ACU for 25 years. Mr. Norquist has been at Americans for Tax Reform for 24 years. Many of the same problems with career congressmen apply to career Washington insiders, like losing touch with the people you’re supposed to represent and becoming part of D.C. culture. (See Norquist’s K-Street Project or Keene’s recent angry confrontation with filmmaker John Ziegler.) While individuals may make themselves beltway institutions, they become less effective for the conservative cause because their rhetoric and tactics become tired and predictable.
If conservative organizations in D.C. want to see a revitalization of the conservative movement and a renewal of the connection between national conservative groups and the grassroots, the best thing they could do is apply conservative rhetoric on term limits to themselves. No one is indispensable.
Those groups who have had the same leader for more than eight years should start making plans for a transition to new leadership, and the right’s old war horses should return to private life and get back in touch with the rest of us. Now that’s some change we could believe in.
Good article, except the part baout term limits. I oppose artifical term limits. We already have term limits. It’s called voting. If someone is the rare individual doing a good job, “Please Sir, I’d like some more.”
Term limits is what caused so many good guys from the ’94 revolution to leave in 2000. The professional pols moved back in, and the progress was undone. I want the good, capable men to stay. I just want the career hacks out.
You can say that again.
Strange you should think some conservatives have been in DC too long.
There has not been ONE conservative in DC since Barry Goldwater, so
what are you talking about?
“In a men’s room in Minneapolis, former Senator Larry Craig indignantly asked an undercover police officer: “Do you know who I am?”
I am considered to be somewhat knowledgeable about politics—and I would not have recognized Senator Larry Craig if my life depended on it. Moreover, I had to Google his name after his arrest. It is my guess that perhaps less than one American out of three hundred would have had any clue regarding Craig’s identity. The Idaho U.S. senator might be immediately recognized by Washington,DC, insiders. Outsiders, fairly or unfairly, could care less. The late Ted Kennedy was a very rare political figure. One has to constantly obtain media attention to become even somewhat famous. It is hysterically funny that any sensible person would make fun of Mike Huckabee’s Fox TV show. He took advantage of this golden opportunity to remain a household name to the conservative hoi polloi. He would have otherwise been quickly forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
Who is this Norquist and why should anyone listen to him? Was he around for the GOP collapse in the last two election cycles? If so, I would think that takes away any basis for him offering political directives.
I’m a fan of term limits not because I believe all conservatives in DC are corrupt–Boehner seems to be doing well, but because I think we need to have new ideas constantly being brought into politics. People who are already in will be afraid to try new things for fear of losing their seats. New people will be elected because of new ideas. It’s a win-win.
Terrific article.
Grover Norquist is a paid shill for the Saudis. While I see him as being correct on a bunch of specific topics, his whole operation is bought and paid for by petro-dollars.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/04/is-grover-norquist-an-islamist
HEAR HEAR!!
It’s well past time to clean house in the GOP leadership, both that which is elected, and appointed to the RNC. They have all lost touch with reality inside the beltway. That mentality led to the loss of the “permanent majority” in 2006 and further losses in 2008. It’s time to break out the brooms and bring in some new people who haven’t lost sight of what the GOP is supposed to stand for. We are NOT democratic lite, we stand for smaller, more efficient government (no that’s not redundant idiocy–government CAN be made more efficient if it’s run as a business), a stronger more responsible foriegn policy (Teddy Roosevelt was right–speak softly and carry a big stick), eliminating those government departments that have become Federal Jobs programs–Education (give the money saved as proportional block grants to the states) for example.
In other words offer this country a genuine alternative to what the socialist now in control of the the Legislative and Executivve branches of our government are offering, not just a watered down “Dem-Lite”. We are NOT socialists by history, there is a reason why our forefathers came to this country. Was it not to for those who had a choice, but to escape the disasters that Europe, Africa, Asia and Central/South America have become? Or was it merely to turn America into the mirror image of the rest of the world. If the rest of the world despises us so much, why then, do they desire in such huge numbers to come here?
Our elected leaders have come to care more about remaining in office and passing out judicial favours to their campaign donors than about what is good for the country. It’s well past time to pass an amendment that limits the number of terms in office ANY Representative, Delegate or Senator can hold. It’s time to limit the number of days per year that Congress sits in session. Their endless sessions produce huge bills that no one can genuinely comprehend until after they are enacted and the disaster that they are can be fully realized.
The men and women who founded this country never envisioned that we would have a class of professional politicians. Even a quick reading of the Federalist Papers, by James Madison, et al, gives a sense that their intention was that new men and women would come forward every few years to SERVE in Congress, then return home to their businesses and farms, not life-long tenures. Most of the men and women serving in the present Congress have never actually worked outside of politics in their lives.
It’s time to sweep them away and bring in new leadership who actually can comprehend what running a business really means. Because running the government has become a means to an end…larger budgets and more people sucking on Uncle Sam’s hind tit is not the answer. Throw the bums out.
Terrific article indeed. Norquist and Gingrich have squandered trust. Norquist’s behavior with the Saudis resembles nothing more than Andrew Young’s mouth-piecing, high-paid human rights coverups, and let’s not forget that Gingrich is engaging in that disgraceful “education tour” with the criminal Al Sharpton. After taking a sleazy step like that, he should never be taken seriously again. Abramoff, the Indian Tribe scandals, Ralph Reed — these people are all connected. And bad for the Party.
Boehner, Keene, huckabee, romney, graham, mcloser, gingrinch et el NEED TO GO. they had their chance. blew it. big time. time for true conservatives like Michelle Bachmann and Palin and other to take the lead. the Teaparty movement is not going away. too many of us feel betrayed, sold-out and very angry.
Is Norquist trying to herd cats?
It ain’t that easy herding the grassroots.
Correction – Gracie Mansion is the Mayor of NY’s residence. I have no idea where Gov. Patterson resides but it ain’t Gracie Mansion.
I may be wrong, and I hope so, but
I think this is what is going to happen
to the current crop of political pros:
They are going to see the money go away,
and realize that without it, their whole
game is as bankrupt as the US of A.
The wise will leave the party early,
the rest will be given the bum’s rush,
and their replacements will get elected
by playing a far more conservative and
pragmatic game; Giving the people what
they need, rather than what they want.
All of the dinosaurs need to be extinct, right now. They need to go. Away. Now.
Not only because they have been there since the beginning of time, but because, if they were coaches of a sports team, they would have been fired long ago because of their more-often-than-not losing records.
Just look at the pro-life leadership, much of which has been there since the 80s. And just look where the pro-life movement is today — at best, the exact same place politically/legally, but with millions more dead.
Look at the conservative “leadership” that has been around since the 80s and look at where the conservative movement is today. Any life that is there is only because of everyday Americans rising up against the beast, which came to power only because of the ineptitude of conservative “leaders.”
While I agree with the general point in the article, you lost me when you claimed that McCain skipping CPAC had no effect on his campaign. It’s generally believed that Obama’s win was due to two factors: 1) independents who bought into Obama’s ridiculous claims of being a moderate, and 2) conservatives who stayed home because they believed McCain did not represent their interests any better than Obama did.
So, I’d argue that not connecting with conservatives did not help his campaign except for making him lose the election.
What’s completely omitted from this article are Norquist’s close ties to Islamist causes.
Wasn’t it Norquist who said he wanted to make government so small it could be drowned in a bathtub? I believe so. And we see what happened in the supposedly conservative Bush/Cheney years. Norquist has outlived whatever usefulness he had. And while I’ve heard of the ACU, I never heard of Keene before this article.
I consider groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste as more “on” than retreads like Norquist & the ACU.
I felt a lot more in synch with this posting back in ’06 when the Bush presidency was disintegrating. As a working class conservative whose never made more than 30k any year of my life sometimes Grover drives me nuts too – like when he’s off on an intellectual rant about the glories of immigration.
So you think term limits was a good idea? M. Malone is right. The Democrats never had an impulse to limit anything governmental. Look at their committee chairmen – the very archeticts of our destruction – even worse than Pelosi. Conyers, Frank, Rangel. Part of their power lies in the fact the’ve been professionals and have 30 years of accumulated networking.
I was half hoping that when Delay was making a fool of himself on Dancing that a loyal conservative would do me the guilty pleasure of jumping out of the audience and stab the Texas pigmay in the back properly.
But how would even that change a thing beside a fleeting satisfaction?
A bit of this post hints at the conservative equivilent of LBJ’s famous observation about liberals – that instead of eating our young we should be intent on a ‘death panel’ for those who’ve gone native?
In a ideological sense that may seem just as satisfying as a loyalist dishing a dogs death to the Hammer in prime time. But how does it serve to restore conservative power and leadership back to a country badly in need of both?
Conservatives can send a very direct message to Grover – besides an email. Stop giving him money until he starts better resemebling the humble and passionate servant he once was in the cause of liberty and limited (and effective) government.
I did, and not just because of immigration. I’m not rich, and he listened. It was because of people like me he got into the biz in the first place. I for one think he still has some of that passion, even if he’s got too much foie gras on his bib.
“Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform holds politicians’ feet to the fire when they renege on anti-tax pledges and also provides great information on economic issues.”
I believe Norquist is also a pernicious Jihadist working to forward an Islamist agenda in America. I believe he works in solidarity and receives money from his fellow Muslims in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and that he serves as a conduit of Islamic diktat from those Muslim quarters as well directed against American politicians and American interests.
7. One final note.
Rich Vail: – Can’t one argue that following the precious miracle of defeating the Brits that ALL of our most famous founders you rightly hail basically are famous because they went on to become LIFE-LONG PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS?
Only WE THE PEOPLE can clean out Washington–in the voting booth next time around and every time thereafter. We’ve been asleep at the switch far too long and are now burdened with an incredibly large debt that threatens our future. Yet those we elected, for the most part, keep spending money we don’t have, while prospects for an economic recovery keep worsening. We need to shut down the presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing now, if it’s not too late.
#20 Pheonix48
No, most of them didn’t become professional politicians. Only a bare handful of those who passed the Constitution remained in public life. Most returned to their homes and continued the business of life, not that of being politicians. In fact, both Jefferson and J. Adams, Madison & Monroe lived significantly long lives AFTER they left politics. They didn’t like Byrd (D WV) or Strom Thurmond (R SC) who both serve(d) more than 30-40 years in the Senate. After all, we limit the number of terms our President may serve (I believe it is limited to consecutive terms–though many believe it to limits 2 per life-time). So:
I hereby propose the following as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1. No citizen of the United States shall be elected to the House of Representatives to more than four (4) consecutive, two (2) year terms to office.
2. No citizen of the United States shall be elected to the United States Senate for more than two (2) consecutive, six (6) year terms of office.
3. No citizen of the United States shall receive any retirement benefits from serving in either the United States House of Representatives or the United States Senate.
4. Congress shall not exempt itself from any laws of the United States of America, in whole or in part.
I liked the suggestion that the FBI goes through the congress twice a term to do forensics on our duly elected and often corrupted legislators.
I have mixed feelings about term limits, on one hand they are a good thing that limits the crooks and weasels from being career politicians, on the other it prevents a good representative or senator from continuing to work for the people who want them there.
The other issue to be quite honest is that a Congressman with only 8-12 years cannot do much to clean up the bureaucracy, the life long bureaucrat just has to out last them. We rail against our elected officials, but they are only one part of the problem in government. The other very large problem in the bureaucrats, government culture, and the bureaucracy itself.
Empire building is an issue, as is the way funds are earned/allocated, and the near inability to fire a bad employee. I contract for the government and I see the waste, empire building, and poor productivity every day.
I’ve seen Feds on short time sit around and play cards for 4-6 hours a day for nearly a year, and these people were making over six figure salaries. I’ve seen pallets of equipment purchased just to maintain their budget only to sit in a store room and eventually be excessed as the equipment becomes obsolete and gets “replaced” as the end of the fiscal year approaches. I’ve seen lots of underutilized equipment just because some department or branch head needed “their own” for their little empire.
Common. How can you seriously say any of the afore mentioned ‘left politics’. Certainly they didn’t encamp to the 20th century Senate like Byrd or Thurmond. You tank your own argument for Term limits invoking these founders as evidence. All of these men devoted their lives to politics, both when actually serving in office, and after leaving.
I don’t doubt your intentions Rich Vail, just the attempt to elevate your cause through historical misappropriation.
As for the citizens revolt – I’ve heard it my whole life. The Term limits movement had it’s broadest success at the state level – and guess what – it’s just as damaging there as it would be if you took us back into the 19th century. I live in Arizona – and everyone is term limited – and it hasn’t solved squat.
Marc Malone already pointed out the fundemental problem with the Term Limits argument. We have elections. As far as a movement – your cause ranks with bringing back the gold standard and a flat tax.
You make it happen and I’ll eat by great-grandfathers ‘Bryant in ’98′ pennant.
Grover Norquist has become Grover Norquack…
THe problem is not the people in Congress: it is the people who elected them. 1. If there were no market for pork, there would be no pork. 2. The facts on Obama were there. 3. I would guess there are a significant number of Congressmen who get re-elected solely because they keep their heads down and their seats warm.
Marc Malone wrote: “I oppose artifical term limits. We already have term limits. It’s called voting. If someone is the rare individual doing a good job, “Please Sir, I’d like some more.”
Term limits is what caused so many good guys from the ‘94 revolution to leave in 2000.”
Good points. What happens is the half-way decent pols, the ones you want to stay there, honor their term limit pledges and the sleazebags simply ignore them and run again anyway.
I do think that by the time one has spent a couple of decades in DC, it’s probably time to go. I lived in DC for over a dozen years and I saw how the place works. The minute a pol sets foot in DC, the pressure is on him or her to become a player. Well, how do you do that in DC? By busying yourself spending taxpayers money and making sure you haul enough pork home to keep the voters there happy. By getting on important committees, which means you have to play nice with your fellow pols. The game comes naturally to Dems; they ease up to the trough without a second thought. But a conservative has to constantly do battle with the politican within – the pol that wants power and influence and the fun of setting the ground rules everyone else has to play by. Is it any wonder that so many Republicans give up and go with the flow? That how you get popular in DC – you get invited to the right dinner parties and the WaPo says nice things about you. It take an exceptional person to hold his or her ground year after year after year, and as you may have noticed, backbones of steel are pretty uncommon among those who have a yen to run for office.
I spoke to Mr. Norquist last week and niavely asked why conservatives should work within the GOP, when things like what happened in NY23 are stricktly due to the ineptitude and duplicity of the party heads.
I informed him of a similar thing happening in PA, with our GOP chair in bed with Jack Murtha and currently working to push the peoples choice out of the picture, Bill Russell, to put up his boy.
Why should any conservative work within THAT party?
Translation: “Give us your money and then sit down and shut up”.
The only infallible, unstoppable, guaranteed way to get a truly new Congress is :
NEVER REELECT ANY INCUMBENT! AND DO IT EVERY ELECTION!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAOe4w1zzw
Don’t let anyone serve more than one term. Some of the reasons to do this:
• It gives us a one-term-limited Congress without using an amendment
• It encourages ordinary citizens to run for Congress
• It is supported by 70% of the country (see Rasmussen and Cato polls)
• It is completely nonpartisan
• If repeated, it ends career politicians in Congress
• It opens the way to a “citizen Congress” of guys like you and me
* It would open a torrent of fresh ideas to improve our government
• It ends the seniority system that keeps freshmen powerless
• It doesn’t cost money. But you MUST vote! Just don’t vote for an incumbent
• It takes effect immediately on Election Day
• It is the only infallible, unstoppable, guaranteed way to “Throw the Bums Out”
• When the ‘pros’ stop running, ordinary citizens will run and win
• If it doesn’t work, do it again and again! It will work eventually, without a doubt.
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS. AND DO IT EVERY ELECTION!
nelson lee walker of tenurecorrupts.com
send for your free NEVER REELECT bumper sticker
Term limits won’t work, if the goal is to eliminate career pols. They’ll just bounce back and forth between different state, party, and national positions. Bottom line is its very hard to protect the voters from their own repeated mistakes and the only real lasting solution is education and communication.
In the last couple of month the “grassroots” have shown that they don’t need either DC insiders or political elites to “show them the way”. We know what conservative values are, we know what the constitution says and we know it is in our power to “change the world”.
I’ve always said, heaven help Washington if the electorate ever figures out they have the power. One 3 day nationwide strike and this country would be on it’s knees. Just imagine if those “rich” lower middle, upper lower wage workers stop spending money at Wal-Mart, the grocery store and gas stations. Image if they started to put their money in savings instead of buying a new car or stereo or TV. What if they ate at home instead of going out, watched the movies they own instead of going to the theater? Stopped driving their gas guzzling cars and spent even more time with a good book, their family or their church.
Business would be on it’s knees but the government would be right behind them. I’d hate to see it come to that but I have a feeling, especially with the socialists in charge now, that things are libel to go there. I hope minorities and liberals can prop up the government, because those of us on the “grassroots” right are getting really tired of footing the bill. Maybe it’s time for us to become disenfranchised, and disengaged. Time for us to play the victim card, ’cause we are tired being silent.
Thanks for all the excellent arguments against term limits. I agree with some and disagree with others…there is one further section I would add:
5. That President shall have veto power over single line budgetary items in any budget bill presented by Congress for signature.
that would allow the President to veto individual line items…
But I’m genuinely intrigued by #32 Seanmahair’s idea of a 3 day national spending “strike”. Now I think that’s one hell of an idea! But it would certainly grab SOMEONE’s attention…if we can get 1 million + people to DC on 9/12…how many do you think we could get to…just not spend a dime for 3 days…it’s intriguing…
veto Power!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tZ-4NKOZl8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OYn2Bq4OJY