Jim DeMint: A conservative’s conservative
He was one of the Senate GOP heroes who helped drive a stake through the Bush-Kennedy shamnesty bill. Now, National Journal profiles Sen. Jim DeMint’s continuing efforts to right the wayward Republicans in Washington as chair of the conservative Senate Steering Committee:
“When I first got to the Senate, I didn’t know anything” about the caucus, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., its current chairman, said in an interview. “It was just another lunch during the week.”
Last year, DeMint joined the Steering Committee’s executive team and became intimately involved in its primary activity, which is not lunches but legislation. The committee’s staff, led by Executive Director Ed Corrigan, reviews all of the bills that move through the Senate — sometimes five or six a day and as many as 30 on the busy days just before congressional recesses — to check for language that conservatives could find objectionable.
The staff, or the senators themselves, put the brakes on any bill they want to review or challenge. Despite Helms’s fighting words, the conservatives often work behind the scenes to craft compromises with legislative sponsors on a host of concerns, such as spending levels. But if the conservative senators fail to win concessions, they take their battles to the Senate floor, using a variety of parliamentary tactics that the Steering Committee has adopted or even pioneered over the past three decades.
“It’s not necessarily a status job,” DeMint said. “We probably do more legislating than a lot of chairmen of committees.”
It is through his Steering Committee post that DeMint, a first-term senator elected in 2004, has become a legislative force in the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress. Freshman president in the first of his three House terms, DeMint had never held public office before 1998. Now this back-to-basics reformer is making waves in the Republican caucus.
Last week, he and Corrigan camped out on the Senate floor to lead the conservatives’ successful effort to kill the immigration reform bill that had been a top domestic priority for President Bush. It was the latest victory in a series of battles that DeMint has led over the past six months. In December, he first made his mark as Steering Committee chairman by bringing the fiscal 2007 appropriations process to a halt, frustrating the outgoing GOP Senate leadership and kicking the unfinished spending work over to the incoming Democratic majority. Since January, he and his Steering Committee partners have doggedly pursued earmark reform, helped to kill an intelligence authorization bill, thwarted Democrats on measures benefiting labor unions, and blocked progress on several matters slated for House-Senate conference negotiations.
“Jim is leading an effort to try to change the culture of the Senate, and I think he’s succeeding,” says Pat Toomey, a former House colleague of DeMint’s who is now president of the Club for Growth, a group that backs conservative candidates.
Can we clone him?
***
The Politico has a separate but related story about DeMint’s battle with Harry Reid over ethics reform and earmarks:
As Congress returns from its July 4th recess, Democratic leaders are expected to try to jumpstart negotiations on a stalled lobbying reform and ethics package.
And they are expected to run into opposition from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who dealt the Democrats a stinging defeat prior to the July 4th recess with a procedural move that split the Democratic caucus.
DeMint backs one of the key reforms the Democrats have promised — a requirement that members disclose which earmarks they seek and certify that they have no financial interest linked to them.
In fact, he backs it so strongly that he is insisting that the House have no opportunity to alter it in conference, a demand the Democratic leadership calls a smokescreen for an attempt to derail the entire ethics reform project.
The potential impasse could delay action further and threaten passage of one of the Democrats’ most important campaign promises…
…DeMint says he supports the lobbying reform provisions in the package. But he isn’t likely to budge until he gets a promise from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the new Senate rules on earmarks won’t be watered down or deleted from the final bill.
The earmark provision is a change in Senate rules, which DeMint argues shouldn’t be part of any conference committee with the House.
“The House has no reason to tinker with Senate rules,” said Wesley Denton, DeMint’s spokesman. “The only reason to want to put them in conference is because they intend to change them.”
Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, calls those assertions “phony as a two-dollar bill.”
In a Senate floor exchange before the recess, Reid said he wasn’t willing to cut a deal with DeMint on the earmark provision because it could open the door to renewed debate or side deals on dozens of other individual sections of the bill.
“It’s time we go to conference and work this out,” he said. “We’re not going to piecemeal this out here on the floor.”
Manley said Reid will renew his motion to create a conference committee soon after Congress returns.
Stay tuned for the showdown. We need more Jim DeMints–and not just in the Senate.
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- A conservative’s conservative… « Republican Party of Jefferson County, TN
- Lump on a Blog » Blog Archive » What It Means To Be A Conservative
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Michelle, experience has taught us not to trust any politician.
The day might come when they will turn their back on us and flip us the finger.
Better be cautiously optimistic than disappointed.
…still mad that Toomey got screwed by the GOP machinery and Bush in the Primary.
Speaking of PA, our wonderful Governor has decided he’d rather shut down state functions than go without a stupid green energy pork fund, bailing out Philly’s transit system because the leftists that run that city are too dumb to make a See’n'Say work properly, let alone a public transportation system.
Oh, and he wants to up the nanny state and push for a bigger smoke ban. Big Nanny is Watching You. Seriously, can we give Philly to New Jersey? Philly and New Jersey are enough alike that they’d never notice. Thank God I don’t live in Philly.
“Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, calls those assertions “phony as a two-dollar bill.””
Uh…$2 bills are legal tender.
So the assertions are true?
Oh, and proof that Philly and New Jersey would go together, look at Fast Eddie Rendell’s and Corzine’s disregard for traffic law and eagerness to shut down the casinos (a huge source of tax money, that people voluntarily pay BTW) when they weren’t getting their way on their pork budgets.
Sorry to spam up your board Michelle, I had to, er, Vent, can’t stand Fast Eddie.
Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, calls those assertions “phony as a two-dollar bill.”
I know this is picky, but I remember when $2.00 bills were not phoney. I think he meant to say $3.00 bills..
I have a copy of the $2.00 bills that I used to get for allowance as a kid from my dad… hmmmmm.. guess the staffer of Reid’s is very young and doesn’t know history.or the correct analogy????
This just exemplifies, what I presumed about Reid. He is a moron.
In other words, or at least according to the authentic $2 bills I have saved at home, the assertions aren’t phony at all.
Stand firm Mr. DeMint.
meh, #3 wasn’t there when I started logging in
Jim DeMint makes me as proud to be a South Carolinian as Lindsey Graham makes me ashamed to be one.
Jim DeMint is a hero!
What else can you say?
DeMint needs to give them all a wake up call. I’m a conservative, but I have been uphappy with the party for a long time. Too many lifetime members in Congress, power corrupts. I don’t like it much…but the only way out is to have term limits. In the beginning, Congress was a part-time shot for gentlemen farmers and landowners. They came in did a little time in Congress and moved on, they were SERVANTS of the people…these crooks now, come in, become millionaires (or they are already rich)…stay, spend out tax money on their pet projects, take huge vacations (mostly on our dime)…abuse their power and finally DIE in office (well, not all of them, but too many of them)….what does it take to get them to be SERVANTS of the people, not American royalty?
I’ve been seeing his name more and more but never really knew much about him. Thanks for the profiles.
Maybe Senator Jim DeMint will cause Mitosis to happen in the US Senate. If not maybe we can try Meiosis by getting all the Dems on a bus and sending them to the Heidi Fleiss Stud ranch in Nevada.
God bless Republicans who can stand up for traditional American values!
Go Jim Go
hmmm.. wonder if he is hiring?
BTW: Mr. Reid, you ignorant speed bump, I personally have several two dollar bills in my possession. Of course, according to Dem standards, the fact that I have any money at all is probably a crime, go figure
We, and the Country at large, owes Jim a debt of gratitude for his actions re. amnesty. Also, my gratitude goes to Jim Sessions.
Independent Conservative: optimism is always preferable to pessimism. Even though politicians regularly screw us. I prefer to be outwardly optimistic about Senator DeMint. He’s rare and to be lauded as long as possible. Give him support to carry on. Hope he’s giving the dems absolute FITS. They deserve it for as long as necessary. May others learn from him. Any maybe someday, voters will actually NOT re-elect Kennedy and Reid and other losers. We CAN dream, IC!
Well, we’ll see. If he can stop the impeachers then we’ll know he has some sand..,
He didnt want to say 3 dollor bill because it isnt PC. Just trying to avoid rehab I guess?
That’s my boy! Jim almost makes up for Gramnesty, but not quite.
We should support politicians when they do the right thing just like we should condemn them when they do not .
” phony as a 2 dollar bill ” .Could this be some sort of Freudian slip Jim ?
Inedependent, I dont see the logic in witholding praise for a Senator clearly doing the right thing, merely because he might do the wrong thing at some future time. We’ve had some Congressional leaders really shine of late. Let’s encourage it by offering our support.
There is nothing more refreshing to know that we have able and talented conservative Senators that can take back the mantle from the McConnells and Lotts who pollute the Senate.
P.S. - Graham was never a leader, and is now merely reduced to being a pimple on Ted K’s bouncing beer gut.
Too bad South Carolina’s so close to Tennessee. Otherwise DeMint would make a great VP candidate. Guess we’ll have to settle for Steele, then DeMint can be his running mate in 2016.
Just a general thought on your site design that I’ll throw in here since this is where I first noticed it: Is there some way to make commenter names that link to web sites look different than those that don’t?
bd, agreed on #24.
The reply to your comment is in my same message you commented on. Check the last sentence.
Where were they when they were controlling Congress?
I do not accept excuses.
In the early stages of the Shamnesty Bill, I wrote the gentleman known as Senator DeMint on his official website, complementing him on his vote and public stand against illegal immigration. I’d gone over his record as best I could on the ‘net. His record speaks volumnes and I’m excited there is a public servant that really did take his oath to office seriously.
What’s up with conservatives and ESCORT SERVICES?
Why isn’t Michelle up in arms about that kind of smut?
I don’t like the looks of this.
http://www.palmettoscoop.com/2007/07/11/does-demint-have-a-little-secret/
A conservative’s conservative….what ever….