From the
WSJ:
Describing his 1976 challenge to incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan wrote, "It was time to scale back the size of the federal government, reduce taxes and government intrusion in our lives, balance the budget, and return to the people the freedoms usurped from them by the bureaucrats."
Reagan helped define the mission of the Republican Party. By re-establishing limited government as the central principle of the GOP, he laid the groundwork for the political revolution that bears his name. Almost 30 years later, the Republican Party is at a similar defining moment. Once again, challengers to certain Republican incumbents are needed to help restore limited government to its rightful place at the center of the Republican agenda.
Today, the Club for Growth PAC will endorse Steve Laffey, the Republican Mayor of Cranston, R.I., in his primary challenge against Sen. Lincoln Chafee. Steve Laffey is a pro-growth, Reagan Republican. Sen. Chafee epitomizes the GOP's waning commitment to limited government and economic freedom.
Sen. Chafee has consistently opposed tax cuts. Citing the federal deficit, he opposed the Bush tax cuts that have generated our powerful economic expansion. But his concerns about deficits don't extend to government spending. Bills he has sponsored would add nearly a half-trillion dollars in new spending over 10 years. The National Taxpayers Union gave him a dismal 49% rating for his profligacy with taxpayer money. A close ally of organized labor, he opposes school choice, and just last month voted for a minimum-wage increase. A recent Boston Globe profile describes his ideology as "well-suited for a centrist Democrat."
Despite his liberal record, Sen. Chafee is warmly embraced by the Republican Party establishment which dutifully enforces an unprincipled, though ironclad, mutual-defense agreement that ignores ideology.
Steve Laffey makes a stark contrast. After an inspiring climb from rags to riches, he returned to his hometown to run for mayor and rescue the city of Cranston from impending insolvency. As mayor, Mr. Laffey ruthlessly attacked the mismanagement that had caused Cranston's problems. He cut costs, established financial controls, rooted out waste and took on bloated union contracts in the courts--as well as in the court of Rhode Island public opinion. Today, Cranston has recovered its investment-grade credit rating and the voters there have re-elected him twice. This in a city where only 14% of voters are Republicans!
As a senator, Mr. Laffey would cut wasteful spending, especially corporate welfare; make the Bush tax cuts permanent; expand international trade; reform insolvent entitlements and fix broken tort laws. In short, he's precisely the kind of pro-growth, limited-government Republican the Senate badly needs more of.
After 10 years of controlling Congress, Washington Republicans have an identity crisis. It was Republicans who gave us a farm bill that only a Soviet central planner could love; a campaign-finance reform bill that expands government's unconstitutional restrictions on speech; a prescription-drug entitlement program that Lyndon Johnson could only have dreamed of; and a transportation bill with more than 40-times as many pork projects it took to earn Reagan's veto. So, we ask a fair question: Is Reagan's vision of limited government--the fundamental principle that brought Republicans to power--still part of the Republican identity, or has it been abandoned in favor of the seductive power of controlling unlimited government?
The fate of two bills before Congress, and a few Republican primaries, might help to answer the question. After years of spending increases, Republicans are now struggling to pass--over the opposition of Sen. Chafee and other so-called moderates--a tiny, mostly symbolic, cut in the growth of future federal spending. And if that were not enough, the Chafee cabal is attempting to block a bill extending the very tax cuts that have given us economic expansion.
The party of Reagan has been reduced to this--which is why it's time for Laffey vs. Chafee, the first skirmish in a very important battle.
Mr. Toomey is president of the Club for Growth.
