Friday, February 20, 2009

LABOR PAINS: Republican unity and few good Democrats stop the special interest spectacular!

Mark this day on your calendar. February 20, 2009 saw a rare bipartisan display of political leadership and courage in Iowa. Does the imminent defeat of the center piece of the Democrat Socialist-Labor legislative agenda portend the hinge of fate?

Our House Republican caucus showed great unity of purpose and persuasion in mounting not just a unified opposition to the proletariat payoff but advanced a widespread and well articulated opposition. We went out and told the public just exactly what reality lay behind the Democrat euphemisms of “fairness” and “leveling the playing field”.

We told our story. Since our story arose from factual reality and experience based logic we triumphed. Our new leadership team in the House obtained a triumph in its first at bat. Having listened to much of the debate we had particularly skilled arguers in Linda Upmeyer, Lance Horbach, Chris Hagenow all sounded great. Jodi Tymeson really seemed to stand out. The magnitude of the issue provided attention and we seized the intellectual high ground and pounded down the Democrat plan to payoff the union thugs that worked so very hard for them.

Standing on principle works. It also seems to be contagious.

Five Democrats crossed over and voted no. McKinley Bailey pulled the 51st vote rug right from under CoGovernor Murphy and Bully McCarthy by voting no and leaving the building. Larry Marek less unexpectedly voted no and joined Bailey in immediately leaving the Capitol grounds following his vote. Dolores Mertz and Brian Quirk once again abandoned the hard left. Waterloo Democrat Doris Kelley best cast the issue in explaining her no vote:

I've never supported this bill, … I think it's wrong when we are focusing on labor bills right now when we should be focusing on how we're going to turn this economy around and how we're going to take care of all Iowans."

If Rep. Kelley’s statement describes a Democrat leadership triumvirate that views with the public trust through the same kleptocratic lens as Rob Blagojevich, William Jefferson and Charley Rangel? Most of our readers have heard Dawn Pettengill’s horror story of the implicit and explicit threats that the union thugs make when a Democrat dares to place the public interest before the special labor interest so we all have a pretty good idea of what the five crossovers are in for this weekend. What those five Democrats did takes real courage and it doesn’t even choke in our throat to say it.

We’ve seen what happens when we Republicans listen to the voters and follow the public interest. We’ve also seen what happens when we really fight back. Now………….let’s keep it up.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our folks did very good work yesterday. I listened to bunches of the live feed from the Iowa General Assembly page. It was pretty riveting. I heard Jody Tymeson alot and she was extremely effective. I wish I could have heard the whole thing. Linda Upmyer was good too. Way to go gals!

Anonymous said...

I heard you on Deace last night. Wow...you were on fire too. Best show yet.

Congrats!

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