National Review Endorses Shadegg

[Annie]

http://www.nationalreview.com/editorial/editors200601131656.asp

January 13, 2006, 4:56 p.m.
Shadegg for Leader

Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona has jumped into the House majority-leader race. He is a decided underdog and is taking a personal risk by voluntarily giving up his leadership slot as head of the Republican Policy Committee to pursue the majority leadership. But fortune favors the bold, and so do we. At a time of an ethical crisis, when the Republican majority often seems to have lost direction, John Shadegg is the right man to clean house and restore the GOP majority to its core principles. We endorse John Shadegg for majority leader.

No one doubts Shadegg's talent or his principle. While all three contenders have conservative voting records, Shadegg is a member of the class of 1994 who never lost the conservative, reformist spirit of that watershed year. He voted against No Child Left Behind, and, more recently, against the prescription-drug bill. He has warm personal relations with the conference's moderates, and is a fresh face at a moment that cries out for one.

There are three imperatives for the House GOP in the current environment that threatens its majority: Can it clean up its image? Can it reform practices that have at best made for sloppy governance and at worst contributed to corruption? And can it pursue policies that restore the trust of its political base and restore a purpose to an often direction-less majority? Shadegg is the best candidate on all counts.

Of the three contenders, he is the candidate least associated with the status quo, and the cozy world of K Street. That's a good thing. After his election, the next majority leader must be able to withstand withering scrutiny from a media eager to take down another top Republican on ethical grounds. Although Shadegg — along with a bipartisan majority in Congress — has minor connections to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he has never been close to K Street.

“The future direction,
and perhaps the future existence,
of the House Republican majority
depends on choices that will be made in coming weeks.”

When it comes to reform, Shadegg wants aggressively to push to tighten lobbying rules and — most importantly — increase the transparency of the legislative process, control earmarks, and change the antiquated budget process that favors out-of-control spending. In recent days, the other candidates, Majority Whip Roy Blunt and Rep. John Boehner of Ohio (the latter who, to his credit, is a longtime scourge of earmarks), have started a minor bidding war on reform. That's all to the good. We expect Shadegg — who just joined the campaign Friday morning — to up the ante in coming days. We believe he is the candidate most credible on reform, and most likely to carry it out if elected.

On policy, the Republican conference seems to have lost its way lately. Shadegg has not. He is a conviction conservative. As he told NRO earlier this week, "We need to shrink the size of government, not grow it. We need to reform government, not manage it." A majority leader can't be a purist, of course, and, as we have often noted, it's not a lack of will or conviction alone that has created limited-government conservatism's difficulties — larger forces are at play. But given the dismaying recent drift, the top of the leadership could use an infusion of Shadegg's sort of unvarnished principle.

Conservatives both inside and outside the House have complained a lot recently, because there has been much to complain about. But venting and carping have their limits. Now, there is a chance to make a real difference. Now is the time for the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House conservatives, to stand up and be counted. The future direction, and perhaps the future existence, of the House Republican majority depends on choices that will be made in coming weeks. We are ready to cast our vote — for John Shadegg.

 

[William Joyce]

Never heard of him but I'll start watching. Voting against NCLB is a bold, brave move.

I personally wish Tom Tancredo would gun for a leadership position, but by going for immigration reform, he's probably secured his backbencher status with today's New York Times endorsement-seeking GOP.

 

[Annie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400823_pf.html

In Shadegg's Race, a Nod to the '94 Revolution

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006; A05

He grew up around Barry Goldwater, arrived in Washington with the "Contract With America" crowd, boycotted one of President Bill Clinton's State of the Union speeches and is more conservative on some issues than President Bush.

Now John Shadegg, a six-term Republican congressman from Arizona, has jumped into the race for House majority leader, trying to position himself as the reform candidate in challenging two more established members of the GOP leadership, Missouri's Roy Blunt and Ohio's John A. Boehner.

In arguing that the Republicans have "lost sight of our ideals," Shadegg, 56, is espousing not only tighter ethics rules, but also a return to the smaller-government ethos that has been lost in an era of ballooning budgets and pork-barrel spending.

"I think he's by far the most conservative guy who's acceptable to a broad ideological spectrum in the [Republican] Conference," said former representative Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, who encouraged Shadegg to run. "He's a very easy guy to get along with, a very good-natured guy. He doesn't make enemies." While clearly an underdog, Toomey said, "John is in the best position to demand a departure from the old ways of doing business."

Blunt, who is acting majority leader, tried to declare the race over yesterday, saying in a statement that he has more than the 117 votes required to win the post. But Shadegg, saying he already has gained defections among Blunt supporters since announcing his candidacy Friday, countered: "Vote counts in this sort of race are notoriously inaccurate. I am in this race to the finish."

Boehner said in a statement that if Blunt is so conf

ident, he should resign as House majority whip to allow for an open race for that post. (While serving as acting majority leader, Blunt has kept the whip job.)

Shadegg's father, Stephen, managed Goldwater's 1952 Senate campaign, and his son stuffed envelopes and often listened as the two men talked politics. Steeped in free-market libertarianism, Shadegg became a lawyer, worked in the state attorney general's office and then served as counsel to Republicans in the Arizona legislature.

He won a House seat in his suburban Phoenix district in 1994, the year that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans won control of the House. Soon afterward, he opposed a measure to phase out federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, saying the funding should be ended immediately. Shadegg later took over the presidency of GOPAC, Gingrich's political action committee.

"He's Newt's progeny," said Marshall Wittmann, a Democratic Leadership Council aide who previously worked for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "A hard-core, true-believing, hard-charging right-winger who believes everything Newt said about dismantling government and transforming the culture. In many ways, he is trying to revive the spirit of the revolution of '94."

Shadegg drew national attention for refusing to attend Clinton's 1999 State of the Union address, shortly after the House impeached Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky affair.

The Arizona Republic has called Shadegg a "firebrand" and "equal-opportunity iconoclast." He argued in 2001 that Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut was not big enough. He has bucked the administration on a number of issues, refusing to vote for the aviation security act or Medicare prescription-drug benefits, one of only 25 Republicans to oppose the costly program. But Shadegg, a policy expert, also helped devise a compromise on a patients' bill of rights that ultimately died in Congress.

Shadegg's base of support has been the Republican Study Committee, a conservative House gathering that he previously headed. He is giving up the chairmanship of the Republican Policy Committee, the No. 5 leadership post, to make the race.

His mouth has occasionally gotten him in trouble. During a 2000 dispute over Clinton's decision to create a national forest near Tucson, Shadegg said: "I would draw a parallel to Hitler. He eroded the will of the German people to resist evil." At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Shadegg described liberal filmmaker Michael Moore as the "anti-Christ" and said supporters of Democratic candidate John F. Kerry "have mental health problems."

Shadegg underwent coronary bypass surgery in 2002, but it does not appear to have slowed him down. He won reelection in 2004 with 80 percent of the vote and no Democratic opposition.

When Shadegg gave up more than $6,900 in campaign contributions last month from clients associated with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his spokesman made a point of saying the Arizonan had never met Abramoff.

While not a "bomb-thrower" on social issues, as Wittmann put it, Shadegg has drawn his strongest backing from economic conservatives. CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow said on his blog that if Shadegg were to succeed Tom DeLay in the No. 2 House post, it "would stop the misbegotten march toward big government conservatism and budget excess which has gotten the Republican Congress into so much trouble."

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Shadegg sounds just like what the doctor ordered for the GOP.