'Have Republicans Learned Their Lesson Yet?'
By Chuck Muth (12/11/07)
Most people learn from their mistakes. But Republicans in the United States Senate aren't most people.
By November 2006, conservative voters had had enough of Republicans in Congress. The GOP majority was spending money faster than Democrats had ever dreamed, they were expanding government further than even Lyndon Johnson would have dared, and their most visibly aggressive campaign against terrorism consisted of confiscating tubes of toothpaste at American airports. This was the party of Reagan and Goldwater?
A perfect example of Republicans undermining the conservative agenda leading up to 2006 was Tennessee Sen. Lamar! Alexander. Recall that in the late 1990s, as the Internet was exploding on the scene, the government at state and local levels saw a new pot of taxable gold. So Congress passed a temporary moratorium on Internet taxation, but not before some states had already gotten their e-hooks into the net.
Now fast-forward to April 2004. A Senate bill is advanced to make the temporary moratorium permanent. Standing in the way: Republican Lamar! Alexander. Due largely to his opposition, instead of passing a permanent ban, the temporary one was extended for an additional four years.
In a press release following the vote, Lamar! boasted that the Senate bill was an improvement over the conservative House bill because it was “temporary, not permanent,” that it allowed states “already collecting taxes on Internet access to continue doing so,” and made it clear that “states and cities can continue to collect taxes on telephone services, even if telephone calls are made over the Internet.”
This bears repeating. Lamar! is a Republican. And this Republican was cheering a bill which held out the possibility of higher Internet taxes in the future, kept in place Internet taxes which were unfortunately “grand-fathered” in before Congress passed its original moratorium, and kept in place certain taxes on your telephone service, even telephone service that no longer used the old telephone “hard-wired” system.
Moderate Republicans like Lamar!, especially those on bread-and-butter tax and spending issues, are exactly why conservatives finally had enough of the GOP majority in Congress and helped toss ‘em out of power last year.
And the Lamar! example is particularly instructive today as conservatives attempt to discern whether or not Republicans in the Senate have learned anything from the drubbing they took at the ballot box a year ago. You see, Sen. Trent Lott recently announced that he was retiring. Lott was the #2 guy on the Senate GOP leadership team. Sen. Jon Kyl, the #3 guy, is moving up to replace Lott. And that set up a leadership election last week to replace Kyl.
On the one hand, Senate Republicans had Lamar! - a 67-year-old warhorse and failed presidential candidate whose ACU conservative rating last year was an anemic 72. On the other hand there was the much younger, more conservative alternative in Sen. Richard Burr. Burr is only 52-years-old and his ACU conservative rating last year was a stellar 92.
Senate Republicans elected Alexander. ‘Nuff said.
Copyright 2007 Chuck Muth. All rights reserved.
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