Dick Armey Spells it Out

There's been quite alot written about Dick Armey's WSJ op-ed in yesterday's edition. A couple of things struck me:

To succeed in the future, the Republican Party must get back to basics. We need, in effect, another Republican takeover of Congress, reaffirming a commitment to less government, lower taxes and more freedom. As in 1994, this revolution will be driven by the Young Turks of the party--the brave backbenchers more inspired by Reagan than the possibility of a glowing editorial on the pages of the New York Times. Indeed, this is already happening.

A serious effort to slow the growth of the federal budget is being driven by a small group of House Republicans led by Reps. Mike Pence, Jeff Flake and Jeb Hensarling. Against their own leadership's wishes, this brave group and others from the Republican Study Committee gathered outside the Cannon House office building in September to kick off "Operation Offset," a modest proposal to pay for the extraordinary costs associated with Hurricane Katrina with savings from other parts of the budget. Top on the list: cuts in highway pork and a suspension of the soon-to-be-implemented expansion of Medicare.

It would have been easier not to have overspent in the first place, but the Republican Congress must reestablish its credibility as the party of spending restraint and fiscal responsibility.

Exactly, spending has increased dramatically under Bush to record levels. This is not what Republican's are about. We favor tax breaks and spending cuts, not tax breaks and huge entitlement programs.

Bush will go down in history for several things, among them will be his negligence in vetoing one single spending bill. The highway bill was so loaded with pork that I believe Clinton would've been embarrassed to sign it.

More:

None of this will be easy. The good news for Republicans willing to do this heavy lifting is that the "ideas" of the left are bankrupt. Notice that the brightest liberal politicians, like Hillary Clinton, always move toward our policy ground as they prepare to run for national office. Why would Republicans want to act like them when they act like us in order to win?

One final Armey Axiom: When we act like us, we win. When we act like them, we lose.

Clinton will have a serious balancing act when the 2008 elections occur; she will have to answer for every vote she's placed and is even now getting herself right with her party while simultaneously reaching out to the center-right. She will have no choice but to go to the right once the electorate sees who occupies the looney left.