Delighting in this Republican’s Disgrace
Not since Bob Dornan’s narrow loss ten years ago to Loretta Sanchez have I delighted in a Republican’s woes as I delight in the woes of another Southern California Congressman, this time, Jerry Lewis.
Last month, he “refused to go along” with a spending outline negotiated between the fiscally-conservative Republican Study Committee and the House leadership, forcing leaders to pull the bill before a vote. Lewis, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, led the committee’s 13 subcommittee chairmen in objecting to modest reforms in the budgeting process.
While it appears House Speaker had been listening to disgruntled Republicans, calling a bloated Senate version of an emergency spending bill “dead on arrival in the House,” spendthrift Republicans like Lewis prevent the GOP caucus from uniting behind the party’s Reaganite principles.
Federal prosecutors are now investigating ties between Lewis and a lobbyist linked in the bribery scandal of former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. It appears that lobbyists hosted poker parties, featuring prostitutes, to attract lawmakers — and other officials — they wished to influence. As the earmark process has grown out control, it’s no wonder lobbyists have devised a variety of means to influence decisionmakers so they can better feed at the federal trough.
It would be no great loss (in fact it would be quite a boon) to the House Republicans if this champion of pork-barrel politics departed in disgrace. Indeed, such a departure would do much to help end pork-barrel politics in Washington– and to restore the GOP to the Reaganite principles which brought our party to power just twelve years ago.
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com
Because I think pork-barrel politics is one of the great failures of the GOP Congress, with this post, I am introducing it as new topic for our blog.
UPDATE: In Mark Tapscott’s excellent post, he links an insightful piece by your humble blogger’s occasional correspondent, Bruce Kessler, and looks at the president’s strengths and weakness. Like me, he lauds the president on his leadership in war and for his federal judicial appointments. But takes strong issue with the “congressional wing of the GOP,” focusing on their spendthrift policies and offers a positive agenda for how the GOP can once again become the party of Reagan, rather than continue down the path of Lewis. Since Glenn alerted me to this piece, I’ll just say as he might say, read the whole thing.
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Dan, what exactly was wrong with Bob Dornan? He came across as a committed patriot who was strong on conservative principles.
Sanchez, on the other hand, comes across as a demoncRAT shill who tried to hold a fundraiser for the DNC at the Playboy Mansion, of all places. (Let’s see how many feminazis in the DNC agree with THAT position.)
If you know something that the rest of us from outside California do not, please share it with us.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — May 13, 2006 @ 11:43 am - May 13, 2006
Peter, I’m no fan of Sanchez, but Dornan was a demagogic blowhard who gratuitously bashed gays and was so arrogant he barely bothered to return to his district to campaign in 1996 – even though he had been warned.
Sanchez may have been defeated two years later had Dornan not run against her in a grudge match.
Comment by GayPatriotWest — May 13, 2006 @ 1:01 pm - May 13, 2006
Yep. It’s past time to clean house.
Comment by sonicfrog — May 13, 2006 @ 3:39 pm - May 13, 2006
Dan, all I want to add is “ditto”.
Comment by Trace Phelps — May 13, 2006 @ 6:42 pm - May 13, 2006
Thanks, Dan. I appreciate the insight.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — May 13, 2006 @ 9:24 pm - May 13, 2006
this time, Jerry Lewis.
Froinlavin!!!
Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 14, 2006 @ 12:45 am - May 14, 2006
The liberal “B1 Bob” was as crooked and as big a liar as the lefty in the White House today is. Bob is lucky he did not go to jail for the $ he stole in the “House mail” caper. The fact that the MSM/DNC labels these liberals as “conservative” gives conservatives a bad name. I am sure this is not why the MSM/DNC label these liberals “conservative”; that would be disingenuous.
Comment by Rod Stanton — May 14, 2006 @ 9:00 am - May 14, 2006
Peter H – the only way you can say with honestly that Dornan was conservative is if you with the same breath say Ronnie was a liberal. They were polar oppoosites. Dornan was like the liberal in the White House now not a conservative; a liberal liar who said he was conservative. He stopped fooling the OC about 14 years ago.
Comment by Jo macDougal — May 14, 2006 @ 6:38 pm - May 14, 2006
#9 – I never professed to say that Dornan was a conservative. Please read my original post above – I said that he CAME ACROSS AS ONE based upon the times I heard him filling in for Rush Limbaugh back in the 1990s. AT THOSE TIMES, he was either playing to the audience or really speaking his mind about his core beliefs. Obviously, it was the former.
And after witnessing his demise in the HR and learning about the other stuff that has been presented (please remember, I am in Texas and as such we don’t get much news about CA representatives), I stand corrected.
And NO, the great Ronaldus Magnus was hardly a liberal.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — May 15, 2006 @ 4:02 pm - May 15, 2006
[...] While we have said little about Ted Stevens on this blog, with Bruce offering one mocking post, noting the number of projects named for Alaska’s senior senator he discovered when he visited Anchorage, we have not hesitated to criticize members of our party for continuing to push pork-barrel projects. Â I took on then-Senator Trent Lett on his penchant for pork here and addressed the problem of Jerry Lewis, then-Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, in this post. [...]
Pingback by GayPatriot » Ted Stevens & the Problem of the GOP — August 2, 2008 @ 1:30 pm - August 2, 2008