A GOP “Young Gun” to watch
The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel profiles GOP up-and-comer Sean Duffy, a 38-year-old district attorney in Wisconsin who’s taking on decrepit Democrat incumbent Rep. David Obey. He’s bringing fresh blood and energy to the fight — and he’s focused on fiscal responsibility:
Wisconsin’s Mr. Duffy describes it this way: “I’m running because this is the fight of my generation. The prior one fought the Cold War, before that it was World War II. But our fight is becoming one for the principles of free markets and against creeping socialism.” He’s targeting Mr. Obey for writing the $787 billion stimulus, highlighting Democrats’ failed economic program. The DA (who is also a professional lumberjack athlete) is crisscrossing the district to warn about rampant spending, Medicare cuts, higher taxes and overregulation.
But he’s also aware that Republicans can only shake a tarnished reputation by embracing a modern, reform agenda. He’s been laying out conservative alternatives to government-run health care. He’s honest about the coming entitlement bomb. He’s proposing a flatter, smarter tax code. In his first fund-raising quarter, he raised $140,000—a record for the district.
Young Guns is no panacea. Party leaders are still searching for a clear message. The NRCC is struggling to raise money to support its recruits. Voters remain skeptical of the GOP, and the environment may improve for Democrats as the year goes on.
Yet what the program does suggest is some of the GOP’s heavy hitters are giving thought to the party’s future. Given the Republicans’ recent years of wandering, that’s a start.
Duffy’s website is here. Read about his impressive bio and family here.
***
A sidenote: Strassel credits another young Republican from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, with helping launch the “Young Guns” recruitment program. But tax revolt activists in Wisconsin haven’t forgotten Ryan’s Chicken Little vote for the TARP bank bailout. And CATO’s Dan Mitchell reminds GOP big-spending architect Karl Rove of his galling hypocrisy in demanding fiscal rectitude:
I’m a big fan of condemning Obama’s big-government schemes, but Rove is the last person in the world who should be complaining about too much wasteful spending. After all, he was the top adviser to President Bush and the federal budget exploded during Bush’s eight years, climbing from $1.8 trillion to more than $3.5 trillion. More specifically, Rove was a leading proponent of the proposals that dramatically expanded the size and scope of the federal government, including the no-bureaucrat-left-behind education bill, the two corrupt farm bills, the two pork-filled transportation bills, and the grossly irresponsible new Medicare entitlement program.
Not surprisingly, Rove even tries to blame Obama for some of Bush’s overspending, writing that “…discretionary domestic spending now stands at $536 billion, up nearly 24% from President George W. Bush’s last full year budget in fiscal 2008 of $433.6 billion. That’s a huge spending surge, even for a profligate liberal like Mr. Obama.” This passage leads the reader to assume that Obama should be blamed for what happened in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, but as I’ve already explained, the 2009 fiscal year started about four months before Obama took office and 96 percent of the spending can be attributed to Bush’s fiscal profligacy. Yes, Obama is now making a bad situation worse by further increasing spending, but he should be criticized for continuing Bush’s mistakes.
Rove then has the gall to complain that Obama is “…growing the federal government’s share of GDP from its historic post-World War II average of roughly 20% to the target Mr. Obama laid out in his budget blueprint last February of 24%.” Yet a quick look at the budget data shows that the burden of federal spending jumped from 18.4 percent of GDP when Bush took office to more than 25 percent of economic output when he left office. Even if the (hopefully) temporary bailout costs are not counted, Bush and Rove are the ones who deserve most of the blame for today’s much larger burden of government. It should be noted, by the way, that none of the new spending under Bush was imposed over his objection. He did not veto any legislation because of excessive spending.
This is the credibility baggage that true fiscal conservative candidates must overcome.
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And that’s the reason that we need to take control of the GOP and highlight the changing of the guard for the voters.
Last year the voters wanted hope and change, but not the change they got. Now is the time for conservatives to take our party back and run on a “Hope we have some change left, re-elect none of them” platform. Starting with the primaries to get rid of the current GOP reach across the aisle MCainiacs.
For the most part, America wants fiscal conservatism. Putting a RINO in place of a big spending liberal isn’t going to solve the problem.
Both houses need to be controlled by Fiscal Conservatives.
Using these numbers its easy to see Bush was not a conservative.
He could be one of my people. American Catholic of Irish ancestry.
Has the right number of kids for it.
BTW, excellent appearance by the Divine Mrs. M on Hewitt’s radio show.
I sent Marco Rubio money last week, and the RINO Florida GOP head steps down.
Coincidence?
I also sent money to the Brown campaign in Massachusetts, since the national GOP blew all their money on Dede Scozafavabeanswithchainti.
I’m stunned. What a pleasant trend as of late. I hope it keeps up.
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President Bush 43 seemed like a RINO to me on financial issues. He was derelict in not using the “bully pulpit” and the “veto pen” to stop a lot of the “social” spending.
***
But Comrade Obmama (PBUH) makes him look like Ronald Reagan by comparison.
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John Bibb
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These numbers are misleading. I agree that Bush spent way too much money (tried to spend more with amnesty). However, the reasons spending went up partly had to do with Katrina (worst natural disaster in history – wiped out a major city) and 9/11 which brought down two of the tallest buildings in the world and forced new wars and regulations.
Bush spent way too much money, but we shouldn’t compare the spending of the two administrations until after a major and costly disaster strikes during the Obama administration.
All of Obama’s spending has come during a time of relative peace. He is spending money on what he wants. Much of Bush’s spending was done during emergencies (not talking about the financial emergencies at the end of his term).
Call me gun-shy, but that sentence concerns me. What is his definition of reform? Is it just democrat-lite? Compromise? I’ll wait to see how real he is.
I don’t trust ANYTHING coming from any national republican group.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Great conservative candidate. He is correct, this is war against socialism, and it is a war we will win.
Marco Rubio is our guy in Florida.
IMHO, I don’t think airing Republican Dirty Laundry in public by cutting down Karl Rove is a good thing right now. But that’s just me.
I know the ‘grass is always greener’, but having a big family with a lot of kids looks like fun.
Better that we do it ourselves, early and often, than try to pretend it didn’t happen and let the left beat us over the head with it at election time. The only way forward is to clean out these RINOs, and to do that you have to explain to people why they need to be removed or ignored.
It’s very hard to root our establishment types. It can be done, though. In fact, it must be done. This is the way to do it.
A little off topic, but I attended the local conservative meeting in Grand Junction last night. One of the speakers was the head of the CO GOP, I think his name was Dick Wadhams. He has the typical RINO attitude. Saying we need to go in a different direction but defending all past decisions of the GOP. The crowd was not please with many of his answers.
On the other hand, a new candidate, never been in politics, Bob McConnell spoke who is running for Congress and I was very impressed with him. Former Ranger, has climbed Mt. Everest and is a true conservative. He carries with him the Constitution and the Communist Manifesto for contrast. Look forward to hearing more from him.
This misiformation galls me to no end. I lived through it and worked on relief efforts.
Katrina didn’t wipe out New Orleans. A section of NO was flooded when 2 poorly designed and maintained levees broke.
The edge of Katrina barely even touched NO. If the levees had held it would have had almost no damage at all; Mobile, Alabama had worse storm damage than New Orleans.
Katrina hit Mississippi, not Louisiana. It made landfall in Bay St Louis, travelled the length of the state south to north and destroyed 1/3 of the state of Mississippi. It completely wiped several towns in Mississippi off the map.
The problems in La were caused by the corruption and incompetence of Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.
How about spotlighting Rand Paul.
Karl Rove, along with Newt Gingrich, is the creator of “compassionate conservatism” and “big government conservatism”. The sooner we get the two of them to STFU and go away the better off we’ll be.
There is increased credibility for the individual that not only takes Pres Obama to task, but takes previous administrations to task as well.
To simply talk about the last straw on the camel’s back is not enough. It is all the straws over time that has gotten us to this place.
Being consistent without hypocrisy is intellectually honest and to say you are against creeping socialism requires that consideration be given to rolling back our many other socialist type programs.
It ain’t just the last straw!
Newt Gingrich lost me forever when he sat on a couch with Nancy Pelotox for an ad campaign paid for by al-Ghour’s global warming hysteria project.
He is dead to me.
What my point is (and should have been more clearly stated) is that the focus should be to promote the new good conservatives and acknowledge missteps. But to cavalierly throw out little fobs of “bon mots” such as mentioning Karl Rove so as to appeal to the red-meat-Hungry – Anti-GOP media is to fall into a Michael Steele defensive posture of weakness, rather than a strong offensive position.
In the end, it looks weak, to me, IMHO.
And, yes, both Rove and Gingrich should go away.
Look dude, I don’t care if you get upset that Mississippi was destroyed more than New Orleans and people don’t talk about it. I don’t care who’s fault it was.
My entire point was that it cost our federal government A LOT of money. I’m not trying to rehash any arguments of blame or anything. I don’t really care.
What I DO care about is that a LOT of my tax dollars were spent in that region. That was the point.
They evacuated an entire city of millions of people. I’d call that completely destroyed. You want to say other areas were more destroyed. FINE.
IT COST THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION MONEY THAT THEY OTHERWISE WOULDN’T HAVE SPENT.
. . . I’m surprised you didn’t get upset because I mentioned 9/11 and the two tall towers without mentioning the Pentagon or Pennsylvania. Those issues were all irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. Carry on.
Because we all hate Ron Paul. Just ask Allah Pundit. We can’t stand his positions on limiting federal spending. We all wish both Ron and Rand were not Republicans.
Ha, I remember Sean and Cyrus tearing up Boston while on the Real World.
I grew up in Obey’s district. He’s been the Congressman longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m 32. My parents have been voting against him for close to 4 decades. I saw him speak at my college several times, and as a veteran, received his scare-mailings about how Bush was trying to ruin all things VA-related.
Obey’s not a bad guy but his politics are. Congress was never supposed to be a career choice. He needs to go.
I hope that was sarcastic!
I don’t know about Rand but Ron is oft criticized for being too libertarian. But the thing is – politics are the art of compromise. A libertarian compromising with a Democrat would give us Republican outcomes.
We don’t have to adopt everything libertarians say….I don’t want heroin legal or private roads, but would it kill us to move in that direction, especially on a federal level?
ThackerAgency said:
Because we all hate Ron Paul. Just ask Allah Pundit. We can’t stand his positions on limiting federal spending. We all wish both Ron and Rand were not Republicans.
Me: No Doubt. And let’s face it, in 2010, who, other than they and I care about:
The Constitution
Rule of Law
States Rights
Individual Rights
Limited Federal Government
Limited Federal Intervention
Etc.
I guess that is why I left the Republican Party. Or did they leave me?
While everyone is focused on New Rino’s to replace Old Rino’s, I’ve gone to the Third Parties. Only place left to go.
Sorry, Thacker, but I just have to pipe in here. Someone needs a nap! Wow. Why so hostile?
In his first term, Bush was a good conservative president. The second term was horrible in terms of fiscal conservancy- the GOP moved to the left to appease critics. (Channeling Dr. Phil) And how did that work out for you?
Stay conservative, make no apologies, fight to the last. My wish list for the GOP.
I was close on that one but the one that added the final nail was backing DeeDee Scuzzball. He is addled and needs to retire.
Shameless plug: Adam Andrzejewski for Governor of Illinois
http://www.adamforillinois.com/
Or his support of a “slightly modified” version of the auto bailout (using previously-scheduled funds for plant upgrades instead of TARP money). Of course, back in December 2008, he had a GM plant in his hometown and a Chrysler engine plant (the last remaining vestige of AMC) in his district.
Do remind me to bring this up again at this year’s Wisconsin GOP convention.
While you are raising campaign funds for him put something aside for his bail-just in case-being Illinois and all
But I do wish “Young Gun” Duffy well-it is time for some of the Old Dogs to think of retiring-if we do not retire them first. Retire as Citizen Legislators should do-our generation has had it’s run; we were the Young Guns and have left a terrible burden on the new young.
Old John McCain-Arizona’s Maverick no less, is campaigning hard and begging for funds-mostly on his POW record. Out of the blue he is a small government fiscal conservative. He has seen the error of his Evil Bail Out Ways. His ads do not say much out amnesty, go figure. You would think his friends at LaRaza would be lining up to help.
He and his wife may be the only people who came out of “The Real World” to contribute to the REAL world! I remember being in college and seeing how his wife was painted as a weirdo for being part of the Young Republicans. What a heartening turn of events.
Only one thing to worry about , there is still dumba$$ voters from 08′ that are still saying give Odopey a chance.
I just read Duffy’s issues pages. You’re looking again at another LOTE candidate – one who says he is a “strict constructionist” but supports unconconstitutional positions on issues such as the economy, taxes, healthcare, and education.
Perhaps at some point he wil take his position as a “strict constructionist” seriously and decide to apply it to all of his positions, not just those that he thinks are politically expedient, but until then, he’s just another progressive Republican.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Thanks for the reminder about Karl. Good political strategist, in fact you might say he’s the man being the lying pol, like Axelrod. They both trained their candidates to look like one thing and be something else. (Axelrod and Obama have been far more brazen about it.)
More and more regular people are starting to wake up to this. The politicians and average twist voter from the left on the other hand are still blind to this.
Twist=twit… Sheesh. Need more coffee.
I have been donating to this candidate over the past year. I am picking these specific candidates to support early, rather than donate my money to the national committees where they waste it on RINOS!!!!
I’m going to admit to incredibly shallowness here and say, he’s very good looking. His wife is stunning. The whole FAMILY is gorgeous.
Okay, shallow aside. That is great. I am going to be selecting candidates across the country to donate to this cycle. I can’t do much for each one, but I can do something. I’ll be out door to door for the Colorado guys!