By Jedediah Bila
What do Marco Rubio, Sarah Palin, and Joe Miller have in common?
One: They’re principled conservatives.
Two: They aren’t part of Washington’s business-as-usual machine.
And three: They – and many like them – have caused quite a few in the GOP establishment to shake in their boots.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has backed RINOs Lisa Murkowski and Charlie Crist over conservatives Joe Miller and Marco Rubio. I’ve repeatedly heard establishment media voices speak kindly of Sarah Palin while including a disclaimer that they wouldn’t support her for president or any role of that stature.
Rubio, Palin, Miller, and others from outside the Beltway are the independent conservative voices this country needs. Their allegiance thus far has been to their principles, not to some establishment big shot who did a favor for them last year. They are likely to call it like they see it, and if that means challenging members of their own party right along with big-government Democrats, they’re up for the job.
To the establishment Republicans who have prioritized political games, phony promises, and power-grabs over constitutional integrity, American founding principles, and honest leadership, the Millers and Rubios of the world are sometimes scarier than the Reids and Pelosis.
Pelosi and Reid won’t snatch their jobs away. But Miller and Rubio just might.
FOX News reported this week that “Establishment leadership likely were not thrilled to read about the contents this past week of the upcoming book being published by self-proclaimed ‘Young Guns’ Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy – three ambitious young members of Congress who’ve been heading up recruitment of other like-minded wunderkinds for the party.”
It added, “Their book, ‘Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders’, is due out Sept. 14 – a blueprint for America in the same vein as the policy book then-Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign released in 2008, only with the opposite prescriptions. A summary in Politico.com based on an advance copy said House Republican Leader John Boehner is mentioned just three times in the book. House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence, R-Ind., is not mentioned at all, and other heavyweights like Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell are similarly disregarded.”
Chris Rowan recently wrote at NewsRealBlog that “Hugh Hewitt interviewed House minority leader John Boehner a few days ago, and could not get Boehner to commit to a rapid legislative agenda to repeal and reverse the Democrats’ leftist legislative cramdown after the midterms in November.”
When asked by Hewitt how quickly a new Republican majority would move to propose “a serious agenda of reform,” Boehner responded with this: “Well, I think that’s still a big question. If, in fact, we gain the majority, that means we’re going to have at least sixty new members of Congress. And when we begin to look at changes to the committee process, it’s going to take time to implement that as well. But I can tell you that a Republican-led Congress will be serious about reducing spending in Washington, D.C., getting our economy back on track, and getting the American people back to work.”
How lovely. More unhelpful generalizations, coupled with a lack of urgency with respect to turning things in this country around.
Radio host and bestselling author Mark Levin has endorsed candidates like Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, and Sharron Angle, has featured interviews with candidates in tough primaries on his radio show, and has been unafraid to challenge the GOP establishment in order to protect our country and its Constitution. Levin has made it his business to showcase and pledge support for those who will stand up for America and stand up to the Washington machine.
In a segment from his radio show on August 30, Levin stated: “Because if we don’t take back the presidency in a little over two years, we don’t take back at least the House in a little over two months, Thomas Sowell is right, it may well be over. So we need to stay focused on nominating conservatives and then taking them over the finish line. And that’s just the beginning. It’s just the beginning, and the Founding Fathers would view it exactly the same way, as would Alexis de Tocqueville, as would John Locke, as would Edmund Burke, as would Milton Friedman, as would all the greats.”
He added, “Look at this National Republican Senatorial Committee headed by John Cornyn of Texas, who by all accounts is supposed to be a good guy. Well, let’s look at the record, shall we? At one point, they backed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey. At one point, they backed Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio. In Nevada, they backed Sue Lowden over Sharron Angle. In Colorado, they backed Jane Norton over Ken Buck. Now, Toomey was nominated, Marco Rubio nominated, Sharron Angle nominated, Ken Buck nominated. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the TEA Party. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the conservative movement versus the Republican establishment. Had we not acted, had we left the playing field, those states would look much different today. And we as a nation would be much worse off.”
“And now that the people are rising up, now that there is a civilian rebellion, a peaceful rebellion going on in this nation in towns, in hamlets, in communities all across this nation, reform can be had,” Levin said. “The Republican establishment still stands in our way. We must defeat it. We must crush it. Because we must be victorious over it. Otherwise, it will be victorious over us and there will be no reform.”
He later added, “If Mitch McConnell doesn’t welcome these conservatives who you are sending to the United States Senate to help fix this damn place, then he needs to go, too. We don’t sit on our hands and hope for the best. We get off our asses and make a difference.”
Amen to that.
If the rise of the TEA Party movement has taught us anything, it’s that we the people hold the real power in our hands. It is our voting power that determines the course of our country’s future. We possess the ability to toss out the corrupt and the disingenuous with the pull of a lever – establishment party puppets included.
And with November rapidly approaching, don’t you forget it