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Earlier today we were able to catch up with Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) as he was leaving the press conference where he and several other Senators voiced their opposition to the auto bailouts.  Thank you Senator DeMint for taking time out of your schedule to speak on this issue.  Here are the clips from our conversation:

For years, House Republicans leaders have been under pressure from House Democrats to change the rules so that all subcommittee votes are recorded.

Currently, many bills are killed in subcommittees on unrecorded voice votes, which makes it difficult to track a member’s position on controversial legislation.

House GOP leaders have been fending off the push by Democrats, who believe recorded subcommittee votes would make it easier for them to knock off incumbents, to change the rules. But now the GOP leaders are also facing pressure from the right to record subcommittee votes.

Ben Marchi, state director for Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax group, delivered a petition of more than 300 signatures to House GOP leaders this morning calling on them to record all subcommittee votes. Marchi, who said the signatures were gathered at the recent GOP retreat at The Homestead resort, called it a “transparency issue” so taxpayers know how their money is being spent.

“It is not a partisan issue,” Marchi said. “It’s a good government issue and government operates best when it operates openly.”

Duncan has been an unfortunate chairman.  He came in to the top leadership position after serving as a quasi-co-chairman with Senator Mel Martinez.  Once Martinez had resigned, Duncan became head honcho.  Since he has been in charge though, true to his establishment upbringing, he has been a disappointment.  Not only did he sell out the platform that he claims to be at the head of, he helped pioneer some of the worst campaigns in history.

Duncan is an artifact, to say the least, of a time in the GOP that the base is trying to move past.  If Duncan and his ilk are allowed to stay at the helm, don’t expect to much to change.  His politics and his campaign methods have been consistent of the now almost extinct Northeastern Republican mold.  The members of the RNC are at least somewhat awake and will not in all likelihood re-elect Duncan.  But if by some misfortune that Duncan finds himself re-elected, the base will find that nothing will change.

Unfortunately, the others running against Duncan do not bring much change either.  Michael Steele, while campaigning for RNC chairman yesterday, told a group that he felt that we needed more moderate candidates to revive the party.  I wonder if Steele is in touch with the events of the last year.  McCain is a moderate.  Chambliss, the only glimmer of hope for Duncan, is a moderate.

Whomever the next chairman is, they must remember this, when a Democrat and a Democrat-lite face off in an election, the Democrat wins.  The candidates that bear the GOP nomination must stand firm on principles consistent to those in the platform.    The GOP elected officials must have the fear of God in breaking away from those principles when serving in office.  The next GOP chairman must be able to do those two things.  If they can’t, don’t expect anything anytime soon.

-RedVA

“[W]e have long been living in a mixed economy. Government is growing, but the shift is of degree, not kind. Moreover, there’s no plausible escape from this trajectory. For now, government needs to stimulate the economy, but even after the recession ends, there will still be pressure for more government spending… Conservatives want to deal with this trend toward larger government by pretending we can reverse it, but that is unlikely to happen. Liberals want to celebrate the collapse of ‘free-market ideology,’ but free markets do a lot of jobs better than government. What we should do is embrace growing government but also be ruthless about making government and markets more efficient. [emphasis added]”—Sebastien Mallaby, “Capitalism: The Remix,” The Washington Post, December 4th, 2008.

For those who believe that government may be limited, Big Government and its adherents have a message for you: Keep dreaming.

We’re apparently living in La-la-land. The historical trend and the real truth is that governments only grow, only take more power, only restrict more liberty over time, and those trends are unlikely to abate. The latter is actually true, and for that reason, Mr. Mallaby in his op-ed chalks up limited government to a mere pretense.

And so, he argues for a leaner, more-efficient—and yet growing—government that utilizes free markets in some capacity, probably to keep it funded. But, Mr. Mallaby writes, “[T]o get away with big government, you must have smart government.” Here, Mr. Mallaby pretends—ahem—that socialism is just fine and dandy, it just needs to be managed more wisely.

And why might that be? Because government is intrusive by its very nature? Tends towards overregulation? Tends to overtax? The truth is, the growth of government must be reversed—it is strangling the economy, eliminating the promise of prosperity, and trampling upon individual liberty.

Since the Founding, the federal government has grown in every way imaginable, much further beyond its original, constitutional, limited purposes. This has always been justified, as Mr. Mallaby does, as a response to some emergency that government must take upon more powers to resolve. The piece is specific in this regard:

“Yes, the financial crisis has triggered an added surge in government. But this has happened in every recession since 1980 and does not represent an intellectual U-turn.”

Which is really very deterministic. Reversing government ought not be pursued because it is “unlikely”. Surges in government always happen during recessions, so get used to it.

To be fair, Mr. Mallaby does generate a positive argument in favor of growing government during economic downturns by noting that they represent an exception to the rule of non-interventionism: “[I]n an acute recession, government spending has to expand aggressively to make up for weak private spending.”

This is a false narrative, however. By this notion, a receding economy will not soon recover without intervention, and in the current actual case, by extreme deficit spending. By implication, government can thus replace the people as the source of wealth merely by printing, borrowing, or simply spending more money.

Mr. Mallaby essentially argues that the American economy is dependent upon government interventionism to manage its way through the past and current crises. And clearly it has been.

But it is only through the combination of all individuals’ economic decisions to acquire wealth that actually and ultimately creates it. Government does not create wealth, it destroys it. It taxes wealth. It removes opportunities to create wealth. It restricts the expansion of wealth.

So it is not by mere pretense that conservatives call for government to be rolled back.

It is because limited government is an enduring principle upon which individual liberty and prosperity depends for survival.

But, if Mr. Mallaby is right: If limited government is a dream, then Big Government is a nightmare.

Robert Romano is the Editor of ALG News Bureau.

Consider.  Dawson has led a great operation in South Carolina.  He has formed a great ground game that led to the state remaining red as well as electing some of the nations greatest leaders including Governor Mark Sanford and Senator Jim DeMint.  Dawson comes from strong conservative roots and he will weed out the filth that has infested the RNC for far too long!  If Republicans want change for the best, then Dawson is the only choice.

Other candidates for the post include Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, former Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman, and GOPAC chair Michael Steele.  Dawson is the best choice and will bring the best results, a more unified party and new blood to the top of the chain.

More from the Palmetto Scoop here.

Of course I’m referring to the new High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes which VDOT has recently started work on in Northern Virginia along the western side of the 495 Beltway. Essentially the HOT lanes allow folks stuck in traffic to electronically pay via EZ Pass, a toll dynamically set by real-time traffic conditions to drive in the HOV lanes. Personally, I believe such a system is long overdue. I know at Jim Moran’s town hall meeting on transportation a few months ago there were concerns from my neighbors, the fake Virginia, that HOT lanes would only serve the wealthy. While it is true that generally those with more disposable income will tend to use the HOT lanes more often, I believe it is a benefit to all the cars on the road. By reducing traffic on the regular lanes, the speed of traffic will increase. Also, the “rich” will subsidize the infrastructure used by everyone. And I’m pretty sure if someone was in an emergency (i.e. need to pick up a child from daycare, hot date) the driver wouldn’t mind paying a buck or two to expedite their trip.

My biggest fear however is that if the revenue for the HOT lanes are not strictly reinvested into public transit, roads, and other transportation related expenses, then the state will increase the fees disproportionately to the value it provides the citizens. To a lesser degree, there is also the concern of how more roads leads to more sprawl but I think recent history has shown flexible work weeks and telecommuting are ways to fight sprawl and in the future we may be able to add the Dulles Metrorail Extension.