There’s a reason it’s important to have conservatives in the Senate. We got a good look at the biggest reason yesterday when Harry Reid bribed and cajoled a dozen limp moderates into helping him shove through a land-grabbing, pork-filled, wasteful, corrupt lands bill without any real debate.
Conservatives keep folks like Reid honest. If not for these dozen Senators who are the usual assemblage of big-government RINOs along with a couple otherwise sensible Senators who could be bought by a few million bucks for their pet projects, this bill would never have passed.
Conservatives would have refused to let the Democrats put 3 million acres of land that had been available for oil and gas drilling off-limits, thus ensuring that we won’t take more control over our own oil supplies from people who hate us to death.
Conservatives would have refused to pay one million dollars each for 500 trout in California.
Conservatives would have refused to pay 5 million dollars for a “Wolf Compensation and Prevention Program” to help homeowners protect their livestock from wolves. The rich, creamy irony here is that that the federal government put put the wolves there in the first place because Congress somehow believed that having more wild predators running around was, on the whole, a completely awesome idea.
The entire reason this bill was packaged the way it was and introduced on a Sunday was to foil Tom Coburn. You see, most of the stuff in this bill had already been smacked down once by Coburn and he was set to smack it all down again. Alas, his fellow Republicans got exactly the wrong message from his Bravehart-like speech last week. Instead of finding their courage, remembering who they were, and routing the Democrats, they decided to play the role of like the cowardly clan leaders who betrayed William Wallace in the movie and gave Coburn up to Harry Reid and his big-government minions.
We conservatives need to take a good, long look at those who voted “aye” and compare it to the 2010 re-election roster. Then we should do everything we can do drive them the heck out of office. Republicans ought to have a very simple message: There is a place for legislators who use taxpayer money to buy votes from back home and use the power of government to take things it has no right to take. We call it the Democratic Party and you’re welcome to join it any time you want.
Tags: Big Government, Conservatives, Harry Reid, Republicans, Tom Coburn
