As the 112th Congress shapes up, it can already be seen that Tea Party conservatives must enforce the American peoples’ will, or it will be forgotten and replaced by GOP and Democratic wish-list legislation. Conservative Americans must force the GOP-controlled House of Representatives to write legislation that cuts spending, and by a lot more than the $100 billion that incoming House Speaker John Boehner has promised, that’s literally chump change for Uncle Sam these days.
No, Americans must keep the pressure on. GOP leadership is already in compromise-mode, even after they won a landslide mandate to do anything but. One of the greatest failures of GOP so far has been allowing the Estate Tax to be resurrected.
GOP leaders are saying they have called a “truce in the culture war.” Whether that means they have abandoned certain conservative social principles or not is anyone’s guess, but if America’s supposed conservative leadership is going to abandon conservative social principles to focus on economic issue, it had damn well better be winning every economic debate that comes up. That isn’t happening, so the only benefit of the “truce” on social issues is going to Democrats.
There is hope though at the state level. Newly elected conservative governors like Florida’s Rick Scott, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Paul LePage of Maine are taking matters into their own hands. They plan on using the powers protected by the 10th Amendment to wrest control from the federal government, and put it back in the hands of the people.
Read E.J. Smith’s Six Men to Fight Harry Reid, and Timothy Jones’s Lawyers, Guns and Money for some idea of how state-level conservatives are planning on expanding Right to Work and Castle Doctrine laws around the country. The expansions of these laws will be followed closely by me and my staff, and catalogued on my Liberty & Freedom map.
At the federal level, the GOP will have another chance soon to prove its worth. The current stop-gap budget runs until March. Between then and now the House will be asked to pass a new budget, and its contents should be scrutinized thoroughly by conservatives for adherence to the promises of the congressmen who ran as spending-cutters.
