Category → Congressional Races
Parker Griffith defects
Remember not-so-long-ago when Rep. Parker Griffith was ducking Town Hall meetings and public exposure?
Politico just broke the story about Parker Griffith’s party swap and it’s dominating the tubes at the moment: “POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican.”
Here’s WVNN’s Dale Jackson on the topic:
I hope this is true because he is going to get killed in the primary and he will be gone.
Any GOP organization that does not repudiate him immediately will lose my support.
You can not imply a guy a murderer and a man of no integrity and then open your arms.
With Mo Brooks, the front runner, and Les Phillip both staking out solid conservative positions I don’t see how a guy like Parker Griffith, who voted for Pelosi as Speaker and with her a majority of the time, has a prayer in a GOP primary in 2010.
This makes Griffith a dead man walking.
That is a huge blow to Barack Obama. Griffith was an extremely endangered Democrat.
We should now hope him be an extremely endangered Republican in a primary. We will not fix the GOP’s problems if we keep allowing people who are not one of us to suddenly switch the letter next to their name and magically become one of us.
Being a Republican should be about more than just the letter next to a person’s name. We can improve that seat.
Here are Griffith’s earmark requests. He voted for Pelosi for Speaker. He’s actually been more regularly with Pelosi than Jim Marshall (D-GA). We can pick this guy off and get a real Republican in that seat.
Alabama is a run-off state, so Griffith will have to go head-to-head against a seasoned Republican if he wants to stay in office (assuming he doesn’t get 50% of the vote right off the bat).
Griffith’s voting record is far from conservative, too. Granted, he voted against the Big 4 – Obama’s first budget, the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and ObamaCare. However, his vote on the budget is slightly deceptive since he originally voted for 9 of the 12 spending bills that make up the budget. And he voted against all the Stimulus amendments that would reduce its size.
But just a quick perusal of 2009 shows that he voted YES on the 2009 pork-filled Omnibus; YES on Cash for Clunkers, NO on waiving the harmful Davis-Bacon provision, and had a pathetic 0% score on the 2009 RePORK Card.
This party switch signals Griffith’s nervousness, but it doesn’t signal that his incumbency is safe.
From my perspective, this clearly shows there is blowback from the Democrat’s legislative overreach in DC. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are now having to pay a political price for shoving their agenda down our throats.
However, what seems to be a GOP victory at first may well become another liberal victory in the long term. Unless Parker Griffith starts voting like a true fiscal conservative, Alabama could be stuck with another entrenched big-government Republican congressman.
Welcome to the party, Parker. Here’s an electronic copy of the Constitution. Read it well, as you will have to continue to dodge us if you continue to disregard it.
Congressman Bobby Bright evades questions about health care
New NTU spending scorecard released, Alabama congressional delegation fares…
…not so well.
Each year, the National Taxpayer’s Union “takes a look at every roll call vote affecting tax, spending, and regulatory issues. The 2008 Rating was based on 286 votes — 182 in the House and 104 in the Senate — in the second session of the 110th Congress (all of 2008).”
At first glance, it didn’t seem that the Republicans from Alabama’s performed that poorly. Senator Sessions earned a B+ and Senator Shelby earned a B. Of the House members, Aderholt earned a B, Bachus a C+, Bonner a B-, Cramer an F, Davis an F, Everett a C+, and Rogers earned a C-. That the Democrats scored so low isn’t surprising, but lets take a deeper look at the GOP numbers.
To begin, it’s embarrassing that not even one member of Alabama’s congressional delegation earned an A. To make matters much worse, the grading was done on a curve. From the NTU press release:
In 2008, only 48 lawmakers attained scores sufficient for a significantly “curved” grade of “A” (at least 80 percent in the House and 76 percent in the Senate) and hence were eligible for the “Taxpayers’ Friend Award” — a drop from the 52 who earned top grades in 2007. Meanwhile, a record 267 Senators and Representatives captured the title of “Big Spender” for posting “F” grades (even more heavily curved at 25 percent or less in the House and 15 percent or less in the Senate). This tops the 2007 Rating’s 266 biggest spenders and is an even more significant jump from the 224 biggest spenders in 2006.
So let’s look at the raw percentages for each member of the Alabama delegation:
- 74% Sessions
- 63% Shelby
- 65% Aderholt
- 56% Bachus
- 60% Bonner
- 08% Cramer
- 09% Davis
- 56% Everett
- 38% Rogers
In other words, if these results were graded by my grade school teachers (who didn’t use a curve), Sessions is the only one with even a marginally respectable grade.
“For the sixth consecutive year, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was the top scorer in the House with a 98 percent rating — tying Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) record of six first-place finishes from 1979 through 1984,” notes the NTU press release. It’s to be noted that both Flake and Paul have been endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus.
Alabama is certainly as fiscally conservative as Texas and Arizona and there’s no reason that our representation can’t reflect Alabama’s vision of responsible fiscal stewardship.
ALRLC quoted in the national media
Stephen Gordon provided his immediate opinion regarding Parker Griffith’s change of parties. Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent picked up his quote:
The “Burgess” to which Weigel referred is Alabama Eagle Forum Executive Director Brooklyn Burgess:
Michelle Malkin also picked up the quote, as well as one from Jeff Sessions, Les Phillip and Steve Boyette.
It’s nice to see the national media paying a bit of attention to the true conservatives in Alabama.