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Townhall...
Daniels and Christie
Light Fuse Under GOP Lawmakers
By Michael Barone
“...our morbidly obese
federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric
surgery.”
As congressional Republicans mull whether to address the government’s
long-term fiscal problems -- House Republican leaders are being pushed
by the 87 freshmen to do so, while some Senate Republicans are seeking
some bipartisan accords with Democratic colleagues -- two Republican
governors barreled into Washington with the message that the lawmakers
better get moving. And that congressional Republicans might do just
fine politically if they do.
The two Republican governors are Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who spoke to
a Conservative Political Action Committee dinner Feb. 11, and Chris
Christie of New Jersey, who spoke at American Enterprise Institute
(where I am a resident fellow) on Feb. 16.
In style, they’re a contrast. Daniels is slight, balding and spoke
quietly from a carefully prepared text. Christie is large and spoke
bombastically without notes. But in substance, they were much the same.
They were both mightily concerned with what Daniels called “the red
menace” -- “the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of
indulgence.” He warned that “federal spending commitments now in place
will bring about the leviathan state” and “the slippage of the United
States into a gray parity with the other nations of this earth.”
The response, he said, must be “the creation of new Social Security and
Medicare compacts” that “reserve their funds for those most in need of
them.” And “our morbidly obese federal government needs not just
behavior modification but bariatric surgery.”
Daniels also called for changes in taxes, regulation and energy policy,
and he roiled some conservatives by saying that defense shouldn’t get a
free pass. He roiled others by ignoring the cultural issues on which he
suggested last June we should have a “truce.”
But his central message was that Republicans must address entitlements
-- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Which Barack Obama
conspicuously failed to do in the budget plan he released a few days
after Daniels’ speech.
Christie was less elegant and even more blunt than his Hoosier
colleague. Drawing on his struggles with New Jersey’s public employee
unions over pensions and benefits, he turned to national issues.
“My children’s future and your children’s future are more important
than political strategy,” he began. “You’re going to have to raise the
retirement age for Social Security. Whoa, I just said it, and I’m still
standing here. I did not vaporize.
“We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going
to bankrupt us. Once again, lightning did not come through the windows
and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only
bankrupting the federal government, it’s bankrupting every state
government.”
Obama, he said, was offering “the candy of American politics” --
high-speed rail, plug-in cars -- and congressional Republicans so far
haven’t offered much more. If those he campaigned for don’t, he said,
“the next time they’ll see me in their district is with my arm around
their primary opponent.”
Washington insiders and old-timers tend to think Republicans would be
foolish to heed Daniels’ and Christie’s advice. Talking about
entitlements is supposed to be the third rail of American politics.
“I don’t think it’s fatal,” Christie said. “You just have to have the
spine to take the lead,” and if you ask for shared sacrifice and don’t
let people game the system, voters will respond.
Daniels and Christie both said that in traveling around their states
they get the sense that voters support their major policy changes and
are ready for more. The political numbers tend to back them up.
Daniels was elected to a second term in 2008 by a 58 percent to 40
percent margin, even as Barack Obama was carrying the state. In 2010,
Republicans transformed the Indiana House from 52-48 Democratic to
60-40 Republican, and their margin in the state Senate is 37-13.
In the popular vote for U.S. House of Representatives, a good proxy for
national partisan sentiment, Republicans in Indiana led 56 percent to
39 percent in 2010, up 10 points from 2008.
Daniels and Christie have been in the trenches, facing opposition
legislatures, addressing fundamental issues and getting results voters
like. Are congressional Republicans listening?
Read it at Townhall
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