Freedom Line Blog

If you like inside baseball tidbits, here’s Roll Call‘s list of the top ten most powerful members of Congress in the legislative redistricting fight unfolding across the nation.  (Note: names are not listed in any specific order)

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA)

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Rep. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL)

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY)

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA)

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)

For summaries of each member’s role in the redistricting process, click here.

At least outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can claim credit for creating one job during her tenure.  According to The Hill, Pelosi – the frontrunner to become Minority Leader when the defeated Democrats give up power next Congress – has a novel idea how to decide which of two people gets one available job: create a new position.  (Title and portfolio TBD)

How perfect.  Rather than let Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC) compete for the position of Minority Whip, Pelosi is proposing to create a federal job that spends more taxpayer money.  (Unless, unlike all other congressional leadership positions, the new post comes without staff, office, and an expense account; a situation that would hardly appeal to anyone gunning for a job with real power.)

Even in the face of a 60 seat rebuke that cost her the Speakership, San Francisco Nancy is still following the same liberal formula of growing the federal government.  If this is the kind of in-the-box, hidebound thinking House Democrats want to pursue over the next two years, Republicans should get ready to win even more seats in 2012.

Ashton makes a good point about the geographic diversity of the GOP House leadership in comparison to its Democratic predecessor. Another interesting addition may be Kristi Noem, the incoming freshman who will serve as the At-Large Representative for South Dakota and who looks to be in line to fill a new position being created to give some leadership representation to the burgeoning ranks of Tea Party-affiliated conservatives. Noem is attractive, articulate, and has a compelling biography. She looks to be a definite rising star in the party.

I think the mix of the two parties may be reflective of what caused the Democrats to go astray in the past few years. Looking at the new Republican leadership, only Texan Jeb Hensarling comes from a state where Republicans are reliably strong in both federal and state elections. Democrats, on the other hand, populated their leadership ranks with figures from the deepest of the deep blue states. They governed that way too. And in so doing, they forgot all the lessons that gave them control of the Congress.

In the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, Rahm Emanuel in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate gave considerable flexibility to their recruited candidates, allowing them to run with conservative positions on a host of issues that allowed them to escape being tarred as liberals in the Midwest, the South, and the Mountain West. While they succeeded in getting a large percentage of those candidates elected, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda then lurched so heavily to the left that the new members had to run for reelection in the shadow of a record that undermined all their pretensions of moderation.

The facile interpretation of this trend is that a party always has to govern from the center to keep its majority. That’s also the rationale for liberals like  E.J. Dionne, who hope that the new conservative majority’s stand on principle will alienate them from the electorate. In his most recent column, Dionne writes:

Give Republicans credit for this: They don’t chase the center, they try to move it. Democrats can play a loser’s game of scrambling after a center being pushed ever rightward. Or they can stand their ground and show how far their opponents are from moderate, problem-solving governance. Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?

This is what happens when a static mind attempts to comprehend a dynamic landscape. The problem with Dionne’s analysis is that he assumes the left and the right are equidistant from the center. This is false. When Gallup polled the question in June, 42 percent of Americans identified as conservative, 35 percent said they were moderate, and 20 percent said they were liberal. That means the self-identified center-right represents an astonishing 77 percent of the country. By contrast, the center-left at its theoretical apex is only a slight majority of Americans. When you then factor in that 56 percent of independents broke for Republicans this year — and that that represented a 36 point swing from 2006 — you see how steep the hill is for Democrats.

Dionne and his counterparts in Congress need to learn the lesson: in a center-right country, it’s more important for Democrats to moderate than Republicans. If you doubt that, ask Bill Clinton — he might remind you that he’s the only Democratic president to be elected twice since FDR.

With Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announcing the end of her campaign to be Republican Conference Chairman, the likely top four House GOP leadership spots look like this:

(1)   Speaker – Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

(2)   Majority Leader – Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)

(3)   Majority Whip – Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

(4)   Conference Chairman – Rep. Jeb Hersarling (R-TX)

It’s always interesting to see where leadership team members are from because it indicates where the strength of the party lies.  Since leadership positions are sought and won by members with multiple terms in office, it’s intriguing to see four Republicans representing each corner of the country.

Contrast this with the locations represented by the outgoing top four House Democrat leaders:

(1)   Speaker – Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

(2)   Majority Leader – Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

(3)   Majority Whip – Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)

(4)   Caucus Chairman – Rep. John Larson (D-CT)

Aside from Clyburn, all the Democrat leaders come from deep blue coastal states (e.g. California, Maryland, and Connecticut).  Counting Clyburn, the Democrats’ claim to a “southern” voice is tied to a gerrymandered district designed to elect a liberal African-American.  If Hoyer beats Clyburn for the Minority Whip post, even that fig leaf of regional diversity will blow away.

The House Democratic caucus lost 29 of 57 “blue dog” members last Tuesday, making the remaining chamber membership much more liberal.  It also wiped out the Democrats’ claims to represent regions other than the high-tax, morally bankrupt coasts.  That, combined with Nancy Pelosi’s likely retention as caucus leader, will make it substantially more difficult for the party to recruit viable candidates in 2012.

Conservatives shouldn’t count on gifts like this forever, but for now, we’ll gladly take them.

At the Freedom Works get-out-the-vote event last Friday night, several conservative luminaries inspired the audience with their speeches.  Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Freedom Works chairman Dick Armey and pastor-turned-Tea Party activist C. L. Bryant delivered rousing red meat remarks.

The show stealers, though, were two congressional candidates vying to become part of the freshman class of 2010.  Charles Lollar is a Maryland businessman, Major in the Marine Corps Reserves and Republican nominee to challenge House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).  Lollar’s easy smile and personable air are making him a rising star in GOP circles, even if he fails to unseat the multi-term incumbent.

Morgan Philpot is another candidate to watch.  A former member of the Utah legislature, Philpot is known for holding a copy of the U.S. Constitution in one hand and the Communist Manifesto in the other on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives.  Before voting on a bill he asks his colleagues to which of the two documents the proposed bill moves the Utah body politic.

CFIF will be keeping an eye on these two candidates in the run-up to the November midterm elections.  Check back for updates.

What was once mostly a little used device is now becoming the Democrat majority’s favorite way to pass legislation.  So-called “deem and pass” – the highly controversial maneuver that greased the skids for ObamaCare’s passage – was used late last night to pass a $1.1 TRILLION dollar budget.  The corruption of the legislative process was doubly dirty because the non-voted measure was added to an emergency war spending bill.

And just in case you’re wondering, this is the main operating budget for the federal government this year.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sent up a smoke signal a few days ago that this kind of “budget enforcement resolution” might happen; especially since Democrats think American voters are too stupid to realize that “passing” a bill is the same as “voting on” a bill.

November can’t get here fast enough.

During his weekly press briefing yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) had “some good news” to report.

Hoyer noted that federal revenues (taxpayer dollars the federal government takes out of your paycheck) have stopped declining, which is a sign that the American people are “making money.”  Taken at face value, that is good news.

But the part about Americans making more money – in and of itself – is not what the Majority Leader was excited about.  Rather, Hoyer’s exuberance was focused on the prospect of Americans paying more taxes as a result.

Specifically, as reported by CNSNews.com, the Majority Leader stated:

We also had some good news for the first time in approximately two years. The projection of revenues has stabilized, not decreased. That is a very good sign because it is a sign that people are in fact making money and will be in a position, because they’re making money, to pay a portion of that in revenues to the federal government.”

In a way, this small glimpse into Hoyer’s mindset explains a lot.  And the current Administration and Congress wonder why the people are screaming mad.