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Monday, March 02, 2009
Rich Galen :: Townhall.com Columnist
The Republican Intellect-in-Chief
by Rich Galen
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


2. Create better solutions when they are wrong;

3. Fight when it is unavoidable;

We should always approach every question in that order. We should win the argument that our solutions are better for you as a person and for the country as a whole.

The problem with being around Newt is that he says (or writes) things like that - 15 times a day - and then gets in the elevator and leaves it to you to figure out how to put it into practice.

The next problem with being around Newt is, when he comes back from wherever he's just been and you haven't figured it out he'll go to the whiteboard and show you how to do it.

Between Mother Jones, the New York Times and others there is a growing attitude that "Newt is back."

Newt once said this:

This ought to be the goal:

That there will be a Monday morning when for the entire weekend not a single child was killed anywhere in America;

That there will be a Monday morning when every child in the country went to a school that they and their parents thought prepared them as citizens and prepared them to compete in the world market;

That there will be a Monday morning where it was easy to find a job or create a job, and your own Government did not punish you if you tried.

That was from Newt's first address as Speaker of the House on January 4, 1995.

Newt Gingrich isn't back. He never left.
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About The Author

Rich Galen has been a press secretary to Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich. Rich Galen currently works as a journalist and writes at Mullings.com

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Reply # 1
Date: Mar 3, 2009 - 8:24 PM EST
Tadpole - On earmarks
--
Writes Tadpole:

"It is intellectually lazy and dishonest to point out that Republicans supported earmarks in the past - it was wrong then too!!!"


Little as I like defending any "Malevolent Jobholder" in civil government, part of what our Congresscritters are lawfully REQUIRED to do is direct federal spending.

The best definition of "earmarks" I've been able to find online reads thus:

"Provisions associated with legislation (appropriations or general legislation) that specify certain congressional spending priorities or in revenue bills that apply to a very limited number of individuals or entities. Earmarks may appear in either the legislative text or report language (committee reports accompanying reported bills and joint explanatory statement accompanying a conference report)."


Most commonly, the "earmarks" which we criticize - justly! - are those devoting unconstitutional and therefore unlawful spending upon "pork" activities in specific districts and states as a means whereby a Congresscritter delivers the sorts of "constituent services" that Crash Test Johnnie provided Charles Keating (remember the Lincoln S&L scandal?) in the '80s.

But it is one of the few legitimate jobs a Congresscritter does to direct specific federal expenditures in legislation.

The question is whether said "earmark" is on a big, honkin' porker or on something it's even marginally possible to consider a lawful activity of the U.S. government.

Specific spending allocations have to be made. They way it's done know is politically, according to clout and similar dirty dealings.

Revision is required. Preferrably at gunpoint.

But it's as necessary a job as carting corpses to the morgue. And somebody's gotta do it.

--
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Reply # 2
Date: Mar 3, 2009 - 2:37 PM EST
reply to replies
To Gay conservative #7: If you think you can BE a "gay conservative," you're over the edge. Conservative Republicans are, and ought to be, the straightest of the straight.

To Eddie etc. #34 what, exactly, was 'asinine?" My recommendations are based on reading TH columns and posts daily for over two years. I take TH readers to be a self-selected (not statistically generated) sample of conservative opinion. My comments are a distillation of what I've read.

To Rich Not Wealthy #35

My point is that Newt's kind of fighting is useless. What many of you conservatives want to do is lock, load, and deploy against Obama's socialist state. Newt isn't exactly ready to take operational command of a front-line force.

Newt only knows how to play politics as usual. He fantasizes that he's functioning in a parliamentary system—his use of the word "backbencher" is a Britticism seldom used in the US Congress. What conservatives like Newt don't get, and what many TH conservatives DO get is that the time for slinging insults and rebukes at the Obama regime is rapidly vanishing. If Obama is what conservatives believe him to be, then they must be prepared to leave conventional politics far behind.


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