From Washington D.C.
Ted King
THE FEDERAL PAGE
by Ted King
In early February, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum was on the Sean Hannity Show. He recalled the day of the Florida primary when Senator John McCain won that highly contested state. A John McCain supporter approached the very conservative, former senator and told him, "You guys lost!" What did this supporter of John McCain mean? I have been critical of Rick Santorum from time to time, but he is a conservative and is recognized as one. So when the McCain supporter told him, "You guys lost!" it meant something.
We guys on the Right just lost the Republican Party. The nomination of John McCain is not a temporary setback; it's a setback that will take the conservative movement years from which to recover. Then again, except for taxes and judges, the Bush administration has been very bad for this country and the conservative movement. A few honest leaders will tell you the truth. Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine come to mind. But others will tell you that it will be okay with John McCain. But you know darn well that it's not going to be okay.
Then there will be the party enforcers who will tell you that a third party vote for president is a vote for the Democrat and those who don't support McCain want the terrorists to win or that we don't really love America or that we don't care about the courts or that we don't like war heroes, etc.
On judges, John McCain organized the infamous "gang of fourteen" moderate to liberal senators. The 14 senators were willing to hold up those judicial nominations of President Bush who they deemed were too conservative. We are being asked to suspend disbelief when it comes to John McCain, that as president he will be someone other than the man he has always been. The Democrats will work against us, and so will John McCain, and he will do it "from our side."
Hillary Clinton is Richard Nixon in a pantsuit; Barack Hussein Obama is Che Guevera with a Molotov cocktail (one very scary man); and John McCain is a cranky, old moderate Republican war hero. Think Henry Bellmon. The choices for 2008 are terrible. Mark Levin recently queried on his radio show, "Out of a country of 300 million people these are our choices?"
Bread and Circuses in the 21st Century in a bi-partisan move (seldom a good thing), Congress passed an economic stimulus package, sending rebate checks ranging from $300 to $600 for people with incomes between $3,000 and $75,000 with an additional $300 for each child. Couples earning up to $150,000 a year will receive $1,200. This rebate includes people who, by lack of sufficient income, don't even pay income taxes! In other words, it's free money for them. The idea is to get people to go out and spend that money on consumer items, thus boosting the economy at least a little bit.
H.R. 5140, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, passed the House on January 29th by a 2/3rds vote to suspend the rules. The vote in the House was 385 to 35. Ron Paul was one of those to vote no. Every member of Oklahoma's House delegation voted for this bill. The Senate passed the economic stimulus package 81 to 16. Both Senators Coburn and Inhofe voted no on the bill. The bill went on to the White House, where President Bush signed it into law on Feb. 13, 2008.
I didn't ask for this money, and, frankly, given the nation's budgetary woes, I don't want it. I will be giving whatever is sent to me to charity, one of those being the National Taxpayers' Union (NTU). By the way, the United States government now (as I write this on April 10, 2008) owes $9,333,207,000.00. That comes to over $30,000.00 per citizen.
NTU has come out with a new rating of Congress based on 609 total votes 247 in the House and 182 in the Senate. This should not come as a surprise to you, but the rating for Congress has been in a nose dive since the Democrats took control of Congress. That was a low point from which to start a drop. However, there is good news: out of 10 senators who received the NTU Taxpayer Friend Award, our own Tom Coburn, received second place at 89%. South Carolina's Jim Demint received the top rating at 93%. And Senator Jim Inhofe came in at number eight with an 83% voting rate. Now to the House, John Sullivan came in at 83% with a B+, Mary Fallin came in at 75, also with a B+. Tom Cole rated a B at 73%, Frank Lucas came in at 71% also with a B and Congressman Dan Boren came in last at 24% with a D. Dan Boren and I have something in common: we both have deserved Ds in our life. Of course, my Ds were in high school and college. His D came from a lack of willingness to excel for taxpayers. Mine just came from a lack of willingness to excel at my studies. The average rating for Oklahoma's delegation was 65%. It would have been higher if not for that underachiever Dan Boren. For more information on these and other congressional ratings and other useful taxpayer links, visit the National Taxpayers Union at www.ntu.org
William F. Buckley Jr. died at his Connecticut home in February. He was present at the creation of the modern conservative movement. I never met him, but I feel as though I knew him. My father read God and Man at Yale when he was in his senior year at Cascia Hall. Before she met my father, my mother cast her first vote for president for Barry Goldwater in 1964. For years she felt as though she was the only person who thought the way she did until she got a copy of National Review. She absorbed every issue of NR from cover to cover. In the early 1980s my father wrote a letter of appreciation to WFB on my mother's behalf. My mother had arthritis and had some trouble with handwriting; so my father typed the letter. Mr. Buckley responded to it and sent "my regards to your literate husband." Praise from Caesar is praise indeed.
In 1965 WFB was the Conservative Party's candidate for New York City mayor. He would later write about it in The Un-Making of Mayor, one of his many books. My cousin Hugh Markey ran on the same ticket with him for NYC comptroller.
In my mind, one of the greatest achievements of WFB was his 1980 Firing Line interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, who was a media personality in Britain and a convert to Catholicism. The insights of Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who had lived the life of an atheist/hedonist and had found God, were astounding and a must-view for all Christians. Evangelist Ravi Zacharias from India knew Mr. Muggeridge and his conversion story. Mr. Buckley's interview covered two programs of Firing Line and aired every Christmas and Easter until the show went off the air.
Bill Buckley was an elitist who enjoyed the camaraderie at the Bohemian Grove in northern California; he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and disapproved of the John Birch Society. In spite of that, when you look at his life, you have to say he did great things for the conservative movement in America.
As a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association, I must also mention the death in April of Charlton Heston. Mr. Heston not only was a great American patriot who advocated civil rights in the 1960s and the right to life of the unborn and infirmed, as well as the right to bear arms, but was also one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century. Like Mr. Buckley, whom he knew, he was a true Renaissance man. Both will be missed. RIP
"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
William F. Buckley Jr.
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