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by Greg Pierce, Inside Politics
“The depth of Republican losses on November 7 has prompted some thoughtful reflections, but it has also caused some needless, and potentially damaging, finger-pointing and handwringing,” Chuck Donovan writes at www.weeklystandard.com.
“Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who has broad support among both social and economic conservatives, has been welcomed to various editorial pages with the message that congressional leaders who devoted attention to ‘wedge’ issues like same-sex ‘marriage’ not only cost the GOP its Hill majorities, but somehow betrayed the Reagan Revolution,” said Mr. Donovan, who served in the Reagan White House and is the executive vice president of the Family Research Council.
“Curiously, Armey’s long editorials have largely focused on excoriating the House and Senate GOP for abandoning Republican principles on spending restraint, including such issues as the corruption-tainted earmarking process. Armey offers not the slightest explanation of how traditional (now squared or cubed in volume) pork barreling by GOP incumbents correlates with the social conservative agenda.
“Indeed, most social conservative groups either formally or informally eschew government subsidies and many, like the Family Research Council, have long criticized earmarking and supported budget reformers like Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.”
Mr. Armey, “like [former Missouri Republican senator] Jack Danforth, was a social conservative when he served in Congress as an elected representative,” Mr. Donovan added. “Someone has changed, but it isn’t social conservatives or the people who elected Armey and Danforth.”
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