Weak-Willed Boehner Loses His Way

Today's Wall Street Journal carried a brief editorial piece on House Minority Leader John Boehner's backsliding on a key Republican objective- to be seen as regaining the party's sense of fiscal restraint. The link may, or may not work after today. In case it doesn't, the entire text of the editorial, "GOP Flake Out," appears below in italics.

"House Republicans have been taunting Democrats for turning down their offer to eliminate spending earmarks, and Democrats reply that the GOP isn't serious. The Republicans seem intent on proving that Democrats are right, as GOP leaders showed last week in denying Arizona's Jeff Flake a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Flake is the scourge of earmarks and the last person Members of either party want on Congress's main spending committee. He would have been a whistle-blower for taxpayers, in particular against the powerful Democrats who get the most earmarks now that they are in the majority, such as Pennsylvania's Jack Murtha. But Republican spenders couldn't tolerate someone who would call out their pork too.

House Minority Leader John Boehner has been warning his party that it won't take back Congress until it swears off earmarking, so he must be getting comfortable with his minority status. He handed the Appropriations seat to Alabama's Jo Bonner, who had less seniority than Mr. Flake (three terms to four) and also votes routinely for spending that Mr. Flake opposes. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group, compared voting records and found that of 50 amendments on the House floor to strike specific earmarked projects, Mr. Flake voted for all of them.

Mr. Bonner voted against 49 of the 50. He voted to save, among other national priorities, the Charles Rangel Center for Public Service ($200,000) at City College of New York, a fake prison in Kansas ($100,000), and $150,000 for the American Ballet Theater in New York City. He'll fit right in at Appropriations."

I consider myself to be a conservative-leaning independent, not a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

Thus, I want to point out to the 3-4 people who read this blog on an average day that I am an equal-opportunity critic of both parties.

In this case, it's clear that the GOP should put Jeff Flake on the Appropriations Committee. Let's review the situation. Flake hails from Arizona, as does...oh, yes, that's right, the GOP's Presidential candidate come November, John McCain. And McCain has just fired a volley at the two Democratic contenders for their party's nomination, Hillary and Obama, over earmarks.

And the sitting Republican President, George Bush, made a major issue of earmarks in his State of the Union speech, as well.

Doesn't it make perfect sense for the Republicans to adopt a "zero earmark" strategy and stance? Install Jeff Flake on Charlie Rangell's corrupt, overspending Appropriations Committee, and bird-dog the profligate spender to his eternal distraction?

Of course it does! Think of the great headlines all during the months leading up the the first Tuesday in November of this year.

Instead, Boehner plumped for a conventional spender, GOP-style, Jo Bonner.

There goes a perfect chance for McCain to link up with fellow Senators and his own state's Representative, Flake, who would be his inside guy on the House Appropriations Committee.

Is it too much to ask, or expect, that the Republicans, now in the minority in both Houses, and in a tough, some would say uphill, fight to keep the White House, all sit down and align their objectives, methods and actions?

So long as hacks like Boehner wilt under party pressure, cave in to conventional spending temptations, and name fellow-hacks like Bonner, instead of Flake, to Rangell's committee, the GOP will truly deserve to remain in the minority.

It's a shame. I grew up living in Bob Michel's district in Illinois. Just across the river from Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen's home in Pekin. Michel was the amiable, harmless lapdog of whatever Democratic House Speaker, in those days, Mike Mansfield, happened to be in office at the time.

It took a changing of the guard, with Gingrich and Armey in the lead, to finally bring down the corrupt Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, publish the Contract with America, and send the Democrats into the minority for a decade.

Now, with memories of hack Denny Hastert being fresher than those of Gingrich, I guess Boehner's settling into the Minority Leaders offices.

Maybe he even has an old picture of Bob Michel on his wall, dug out of some musty old Congressional storage room.