Is Richard Viguerie a conservative at all? I don’t think so.

ConservativeHQ.com Richard Viguerie has been called, and is still often referred to, as a conservative “leader” or “guru”. But does he deserved to be called that way? Is he a conservative at all? Or is he just another paulbot leftist libertarian?

Available evidence seems to indicate the latter. Take, for example, this screed that Viguerie posted just 2 days ago:

“Will Romney VP Choice Unite Bush-Romney Wing of the GOP?

By Richard A. Viguerie | 8/6/12

Here’s a test to apply to the names of all potential Republican vice presidential candidates: if the Washington Republican establishment, like the GOP congressional leadership, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, defense industry lobbyists and Capitol Hill political consultants, all applaud the name, Governor Romney has picked the wrong candidate and is in danger of losing the election.

It is not a done deal yet, but if you look past the front page articles on the Olympics and the latest crime news, you will find articles reporting that Governor Mitt Romney is on the verge of announcing the name of the vice presidential candidate he wants to join him on the Republican ticket.

 

And the names that are floating around sound like Governor Romney is all set to unite the 25% of GOP voters who constitute the Bush-Romney wing of the Republican Party.

That leaves behind the 75% of grassroots conservative Republican voters who backed Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann in the primaries.

Many of these activists still haven’t forgotten — or forgiven — the carpet bombing campaign that Romney ran to destroy first one conservative challenger and then another during the primary election season. And they have seen nothing from the Romney campaign that indicates the Governor has an inclination to move beyond the smears to embrace any of the conservative ideas their candidates ran on.”

This is utter garbage. Mitt Romney did not “carpet bomb one conservative challenger after another” during the primary season, because with the sole exception of Michele Bachmann (who imploded in August 2011, before the primary season really got underway), none of his primary opponents were conservatives – or at least, were not nearly as conservative as Mitt Romney is.

Ron Paul is a leftist pro-entitlements libertarian. Rick Santorum is conservative only on social issues (if a replay of the Bush Admin’s radical Christian Big Government agenda is what you wanted, Santorum was your guy). Newt Gingrich is an establishment RINO who has been in Washington since the 1970s. Rick Perry is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who supports amnesty, the NAFTA superhighway, crony capitalism, and big government mandates and who said in 1989, when he was switching from the Democratic Party to the GOP, that he was only changing the letter after his name. Herman Cain was basically a flake. That leaves only with Romney and Bachmann. As Ann Coulter rightly wrote several months ago, “Two Indians sitting in the sun, one was just a Congresswoman and then there was one.”

Moreover, while none of Romney’s defeated rivals will likely be selected as his running mate, Santorum and Ron Paul’s son Rand will get prominent speaking slots at the convention, as will Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Scott Walker (whom Viguerie and conservativehq.com have proclaimed a hero). So much for Romney snubbing conservatives and pandering to the establishment.

Moreover, 4 of the 5 candidates he’s mulling for Vice President (McDonnell, Ryan, Jindal, and Rubio) are conservatives. Indeed, there haven’t been as many conservatives on the GOP shortlist for veep in a long time, if ever. The lone establishment candidate is Sen. Rob Portman.

Which brings us to the question posed in the title: is Richard Viguerie a conservative at all?

I don’t think so.

Even though Mitt Romney hasn’t announced his choice for veep yet, Viguerie is asking conservatives to do as follows:

“Here’s a test to apply to the names of all potential Republican vice presidential candidates: if the Washington Republican establishment, like the GOP congressional leadership, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, defense industry lobbyists and Capitol Hill political consultants, all applaud the name, Governor Romney has picked the wrongcandidate and is in danger of losing the election.”

Aside from the obvious idiocy of the claim that picking an “establishment” candidate applauded by these groups would signal that Romney is in danger of losing the election, why would Viguerie rant against us defense conservatives, calling us “defense industry lobbyists”, and say that anyone we (or the real defense industry lobbyists on K Street) applaud is bad?

Why would he smear us and effectively claim that those of us who are trying to stop massive defense cuts and support a strong national defense are “defense industry lobbyists”, and that anyone who supports the same is also a lobbyist?

There can be only one explanation: that Viguerie is just another paulbot libertarian who, like Ron Paul, adamantly opposes a strong defense and seeks deep cuts to it. If that is the case, his rant is understandable (although still wrong and despicable).

So, it looks like another “conservative” imposter has been unmasked.

http://www.conservativehq.com/article/9170-will-romney-vp-choice-unite-bush-romney-wing-gop

The sanctimonious Congress needs to look in the mirror

The sanctimonious Congress is once again throwing stones out of its glass house.

It loves to complain about waste in the defense budget. Several Senators have now introduced the “Audit the Pentagon Act”, which would force the DOD to be audit-ready by 2017, while lecturing the DOD about “fiscal accountability”. Non-governmental organizations such as POGO and the NTU also love to lecture the DOD about “fiscal accountability”.

But the truth is that while the DOD is not an innocent virgin, the CONGRESS, not the DOD, is to blame for the vast majority of waste in the defense budget (and I’m talking about real waste and inefficiencies, not crucial military capabilities that POGO and other leftist groups deem “waste”).

Just a few examples:

• The DOD has repeatedly, several times during the last several years, requested authorization for painful, but necessary DOD healthcare program reforms, including modest TRICARE premium increases. The Congress has repeatedly refused to authorize them (except a limited premium hike in FY2012). These proposals, to quote Sec. Gates, “repeatedly die an ignominous death on Capitol Hill.”
• The DOD has repeatedly requested authorization for a sweeping military retirement system reform. It has submitted such proposal in the FY2013 budget request. Congress has rejected it, and some of its members, such as John Kline, have even berated Sec. Panetta for proposing it. Under the current system, if you complete 20 years of service and retire at your prime as a LTCOL or LCDR or Sergeant Major (when you’re in your 40s or early 50s), you get a full pension, but if you retire after “only” 10 or 19 years of service, you get nothing.
• The DOD has repeatedly requested BRAC authority. Sec. Panetta has requested authorization for two BRAC rounds, because the DOD has exquisite base infrastructure. The FY2013 NDAAs passed by both the House and the SASC explicitly PROHIBIT them.
• The DOD, faced with a mandate to cut $487 bn out of its budgets over the next 10 years, has proposed to retire hundreds of old, costly-to-maintain niche aircraft such as the A-10, the C-27, and the Sherpa, and the Block 30 Global Hawk, which is also too expensive to maintain. The House and Senate versions of the FY2013 NDAA would both force the DOD to maintain the Guard and Reserve aircraft, and, in the House’s case, the Block 30 GH.
• Laws passed by Congress currently require the DOD to submit over 900 reports and thousands of pages of justifications to the Congress every year. So far, Congress has not repealed any of them. The “Audit the Pentagon Act” would gratiously allow the DOD to propose which reporting requirements to eliminate… but the Congress could still ignore the DOD’s proposal (and will likely do so).
• The DOD needs Congressional approval to shift even small sums of money from one program to another and to build even so much as a $500,000 building.
• The DOD can’t get anything without authorization from six separate Congressional committees.
• The budget process is done annually, not biennially, so every year, the DOD has to repeat its work on budget proposals, justifications, reports, and testimonies.
• Congress routinely inserts pork projects, aircraft, and other funding not requested by the DOD into the annual NDAAs and Defense Appropriations bills. The President cannot line-item veto or impound them. (The Congress took  away that prerogative from him in 1974.)

It is therefore utterly hypocritical of Congress to lecture the DOD about, and criticize it for, “waste” when the Congress is to blame for the majority of waste in the defense budget. Instead of throwing stones out of its glass house and delivering sermons, the Congress needs to authorize the reforms that the DOD requests, stop adding pork projects into defense budgets, and end its micromanagement of the DOD. Then, the vast majority of the  ”waste” in the defense budget will be gone.