South Carolinas Senator Jim DeMints Senate Conservatives Fund has taken Washington by storm. The fund raising group has already helped eight underdog Reagonite candidates win Republican Senate primaries this year. In two years, the fund has raised and spent nearly $2million from nearly 50,000 individual contributors.
Mr. DeMint's mission is to bring more Jim DeMint's to the Senate--that is, people with an unfailing antagonism to big government. Over the past 5 years, Mr. DeMint has established himself as the pre-eminent conservative in congress--he has a near perfect National Taxpayer Union rating--with Tom Cobburn as a close second. Other victors helped by Mr. DeMint include Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mr. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Lee of Utah. He says his goal is to raise $5million this cycle. That's a pittance in big-money politics, but, Mr. DeMint's strategic, targeted spending has flipped more races than even he thought possible. "I'm not a Kingmaker," he insists, even though that's exactly what many political pros call him. We've got too many Kings in Washington already.
"When I got to Congress in 1999 instead of working on the reforms that I ran on-wealth-creating personal
accounts and individually owned health Insurance and some simple tax, the things that I thought all of us believed in-instead we worked on redistricting and getting the vunerables on the right committees and getting earmarks to the people that needed them. Everything was about numbers and electing more Republicans. We'd always promise to get to the principals later." I was over there at the Senate committee making fund raising calls and so many people were saying, "I'm not giving you guys another dime until you start acting like Republicans." That's when I got the idea of starting a committee to just help conservative candidates.
His frustration boiled over in 2009 when the Republican Senatorial Committee endorsed Senator Arlan Spector and Charlie Crist, neither of whom is a Republican one year later.
Mr. DeMint was the first major political figure to indorse Marco Rubio aagainst Govenor Crist in Florida. Although Mr.Rubio is embraced now as a rising star of the Republican Party, at the time people laughed.
Last week Lisa Murkowski apparently lost to Joe Miller in Alaska's Republican primary. She and her father have held that Senate seat for 30 years. Mr. DeMint said, "This should be a wake up call to Republicans politicans who go to Washington to bring home bacon aren't wanted."
When Mr. DeMint was asked what Republicans should do if they take back the House and Senate this year. He said, "First put a cap on spending." "Next, We may not be able to repeal Obama Care but we can cut off funding it." "Sell Chrysler and GM. get out of it. Privatise Freddie and Fannie so we can get out of the business of running the housing industry." He also is in favor of a low rate flat tax or consumption tax.
He has a personal crusade to end earmarks. He thinks Republicans can re-connect with voters by doing away with pork-barrel spending.
But, in a $3.7 trillion aren't earmarks trivial? He scoffs, "They always say, it's just a small amount of money, but earmarks always enlarge our budget and buy votes so that massive bills can go through." Members haven't been able to fight against these obese budgets, he says, because, "When we direct money back home through earmarks , it makes us complicit in the spending process, It's a killer."
"In the House John Boehner and the Republicans get it, I'm not so sure about the senate."
"I think we are in danger of doing the same thing we did before, where a lot of young conservatives come in who have been out there campaigning on the right issues, but then all the senior guys take control of the committees and it's business as usual." He warns, "This may be our last chance with voters because if we're given the majority---and don't reform Washington, everybody is going to say, what's wrong with these guys? We need a third party."
He says he has more faith in voters than the people they elect. "I'm getting optimistic, I think as I talk to people around the country---they seem to get it. They want to return to those things that made America different and great. They understand that what the government has done is so harmful, in terms of spending, and takeover's, the debt, it has made the people who are not normally political and not generally interested in it alarmed."
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