Future conservative leader: Marsha Blackburn
Tennessee conservative Congressman Marsha Blackburn is on message today. She makes an articulate case for where the Republican Party should go to earn the respect and support of the American people. She argues for returning to limited government and practicing what the party preaches: fiscal restraint, personal responsibility and solutions to pocketbook issues.
We cannot tax and spend our way to a better future. The American people did not vote Tuesday to exchange their entitlement to liberty for crushing entitlement programs. The liberal tendency to ease America into the false comfort of a cradle-to-grave welfare state will worsen rather than solve the self propagating crisis of expensive and ineffective government. Republicans have a duty to make sure this is not what they get.
Blackburn then reminds the Republican Party that mere talk is not enough. The rank and file members in Congress must actually meet their rhetoric with action.
Committed Republican leaders must reassert the relevance of our party to a generation of voters born after 1988. Rather than focus on “branding” our cause, let us simply pursue it. In that pursuit, we will rebuild trust and regain purpose.
The Republican Party must talk to the American people about its ideas for reforming health care, energy, government spending and corruption. These are the issues that the voters care about, and the party should keep this in mind as it tries to figure out why its message did not resonate with voters these last two elections.
The party must also acknowledge that president Bush, and congressional leaders like Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert, caused the party to lose its support. These party leaders led us down the road to massive government spending, like the prescription drugs benefit and billions of dollars in earmarks.
It’s time to give the next generation of conservative leaders the reins, and let them move beyond the last eight years and eventually lead us out of the wilderness and back into power.
Every conservative should get behind the following leaders in the Republican Party, and demand that the party leadership replace the “old bulls” with the “young turks.” Here is a beginning list, though incomplete:
House Members:
Marsha Blackburn
Mike Pence
Jeb Hensarling
Jeff Flake
Paul Ryan
Senate:
Jim DeMint