It's Only Just Begun

In case you missed the news this morning, Speaker Pelosi has issued marching orders to members of Congress leaving Washington for their two week recess. Among the many lowlights of Speaker Pelosi's directives is the following:

"With the passage of health insurance reform, this District Work Period is a critical time to go on offense.” Pelosi continued, "Convey the immediate benefits of health reform to your constituents (such as better prescription drug benefits for seniors, tax credits for small businesses and prohibiting insurance companies from canceling your policy if you get sick).”

The Hill reported: "Democrats are bracing for significant losses in the House and Senate this fall, but believe they can at least mitigate expected mid-term losses by aggressively touting the healthcare bill and moving to other issues, such as financial regulatory reform, that they believe put Republicans on the defensive.

Obama kicked into campaign mode Thursday, saying he welcomed a fight with Republicans over healthcare. If the GOP wants to repeal the bill, it should “go for it,” the president said."

In a memo to his members, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Friday stressed that Republicans would work not only to repeal the healthcare law, but to “replace it with solutions that will protect jobs and lower Americans’ health costs.”

Boehner said his party would “repeal ObamaCare’s job-destroying tax hikes and mandates and replace them with common-sense, market-based solutions that cover Americans with existing conditions.”

Fellow Republicans, I don't need to tell you that when the one side goes on offense, the other side can only respond by going on defense. So, my advice to our side: Let's go on offense, FIRST. Whether it's in conversations with friends or family members, opportunities to speak with your local, state or congressional representatives, or online in forums or your private email blasts, go on offense, be armed with facts and truth, and be civil in your efforts to promote he conservative cause.

Minority Leader Boehner has given us some pointers and some direction. Congressman Paul Ryan provided a great number of ideas and details in a New York Times column Friday. Byron York wrote a column this week detailing the lack of support nationally for the health care bill the democrats forced through Congress last Sunday. All of this points to the obvious: The democrats are coming home to sell us on something we didn't want in the first place, they're now in the position of having to tell us after the fact that we really did want it after all.

Armed with the truth, the facts and with history; Americans across the country, let's go to work for our cause.

A Response to Terry Lowry: We Republicans have a Choice for Unity, and a Choice against the taint of Pay-for-Play politics

For most of the 33 years since Ronald Reagan first proposed to build a New Republican Party with a coalition of traditional Republicans, economic conservatives and social conservatives, the great moral issues of our time have involved abortion and the institution of the traditional family. As serious as these issues are, they should not be used as a weapon at this hour in our history to destroy fellow Republicans.

We Republicans have struggled within our family over these issues because of the teachings of our respective faiths, and because of our commitment to the inalienable rights of life and liberty. Even when some in our party might disagree on where lines should be drawn in the political and legal arena, however, we generally have agreed that abortion is wrong, and that the traditional family should be protected. That consensus led virtually all Republicans to support the appointment or election of conservative judges and justices to state and federal courts, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Unfortunately, there continue to be those among us who would rather pick and fight a civil war against our friends and allies in this party over these issues, rather than try to find common ground to advance our shared principles. I believe this approach is the wrong, and that it is self-defeating in the end. In fact, Reagan noted that this tension would exist within the “new” party he was proposing when he said:

"I want the record to show that I do not view the new re vitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won't associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles of the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists."

For the last 15 months, I talked to our friends in this party about our principles, and about revitalizing our party to elect Republicans and promote Reagan’s agenda--but, I also listened. I heard so much about what we agree coming from people who had labeled themselves, or who had been labeled by others, as inhabiting separate factions within this party, that it gave me hope that we could stop fighting each other and focus on fighting the Democrats. I built on what I heard to form a coalition of supporters from every faction in this party, to run for HCRP Chair, and to successfully make the run-off election. At the core of what we built was the recognition that to elect Republicans we must grow, but to grow, we must first unite.

Unfortunately, earlier today, I saw the first salvo in this run-off election from those who would rather exclude fellow Republicans whom they have labeled as being in a different camp within this party—it was ugly, and it was a lie. It came through a Facebook post by Terry Lowry, a precinct chair, supporter of Jared Woodfill, radio host, and proprietor of the LinkLetter. I first met Terry in early 2008, and through discussions with him I know we agree on much: we support the platform of the Republican Party of Texas; we are pro-life; and we want to protect the traditional family from the political and legal assault promoted by Democratic-aligned interests groups. He knows that I am not an ally of pro-abortion politics or the “homosexual” political and legal agenda. And yet, he smears me by smearing some Republicans who have supported me—who want to unite all of the factions of the party like I do—because some of our friends in this party draw lines on these issues differently than I do, or Terry does. This politics of lies, smears, innuendos, and exclusion is beneath not only the Christianity that Terry and I share, but it also is beneath the principles of the party Reagan tried to build. To Terry, I simply ask: Have you no shame? To Jared, I simply ask: Do you condone this divisive conduct?

Why is Terry doing this? I don’t know, but maybe it has to do with the fact that last Thursday I dared to criticize his use of the LinkLetter (and similar mailers promoted by a few other individuals), to act as a self-anointed gatekeeper to the local Republican nominations. I dared to criticize his simultaneous promotion of endorsements and the sale of advertising in the same races, which has created the appearance to many that prospective candidates in our party have to pay Terry (and others) in order to have a chance of winning a local Republican primary. I dared to state that the whiff of Pay-for-Play should not exist in our party.

Ultimately, it is for you the Republican voter to choose which path to follow—Terry’s path of perpetual war with our friends and allies in this party, or the path I am offering. If you want to unite and grow around our shared principles and win elections, you have a choice to make between the politics of lies, smears, innuendos and exclusion that have divided us for too long, and the politics of unity against a common foe. If you want to rid our party of the whiff of Pay-for-Play tactics, and of self-anointed gatekeepers, and take your party back and make it the inclusive, welcoming majority party built on timeless conservative principles that Reagan dreamed of, you have a choice to make.