The following letter was submitted by Jack Bailey, a Republican candidate seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District. It was edited to conform with Associated Press rules for style and grammar.
“When the only decisions that matter are those dictated by the majority in Washington, then the only elections that matter are those that change the majority.”
This week President Obama made it clear that he has no intention of letting the will of the people or the traditions of the Senate get in the way of his plan to nationalize health care. With his embrace of reconciliation, a little-used procedure to ban filibusters and exclude opposing ideas, the last barrier to one party rule was brushed aside. And there is no reason to expect that he will stop with health care. Having established his authoritarian majority rule in Washington, why would he not pursue card check, cap and trade, and the rest of his left wing legislative agenda until he is relieved of his congressional majorities?
This combination of a radical left wing agenda and a majoritarian process has the effect of nationalizing all elections. After all, what does the influence of your congressman matter compared to the massive move to the left that will occur as long as President Obama has congressional majorities? This fall, then, the 435 individual congressional races are important primarily because they determine which party is in the majority. Each Democrat in the House, whatever his or her centrist claims might be, empowers President Obama and Speaker Pelosi.
In the House, 40 seats need to change hands to offset this leftward shift. Forty seats need to change hands to send President Obama and Speaker Pelosi a message.
What is this message?
We want lower taxes. We want smaller government. We do want to reform health care, but not socialize it. We hold you responsible for the failed stimulus. We want to protect our environment, but we don’t want to destroy what is left of our manufacturing sector by enacting cap and trade. We also don’t trust you. Whatever is happening in our environment, it appears as if you used the global warming “crisis” to mislead the American people and advance your leftist agenda. We want jobs, and we believe that we need to send businessmen and women to Washington, D.C., to show the politicians how jobs are created.
Perhaps most importantly, we know we can’t vote you out, but we can take your power away. When the only decisions that matter are those dictated by the majority in Washington, then the only elections that matter are those that change the majority.
Voters in many conservative districts will throw out their Democrat congressman this fall in favor of a conservative Republican who can deliver this message to Speaker Pelosi in person.