Club for Growth Redux
Posted on March 29, 2012
All you really need to know about the insanity of the Club for Growth is that its Chairman, Chris Chocola, attacked the Ryan Budget for being too moderate.
Paul Ryan is a good guy, a smart guy, a savvy political operator. What he is not is too moderate.
Paul Ryan is a movement conservative and his budget is a movement conservative budget.
But there was Chris Chocola, the Chairman for Club for Growth, on the right-wing web site Red State, condemning Paul Ryan and his budget for being too centrist.
His principle concern is that the Ryan budget waives the defense sequester put into place in the budget deal last year.
Ryan does that because he believes that drastically cutting Pentagon spending by half a trillion dollars would be bad for our national defense. And he believes that putting out a budget that keeps that defense sequester in place is politically suicidal.
And Paul Ryan is correct in his assumptions.
Chocola and his team at the Club for Growth continue on their quest to make the Republicans a minority party again.
The Club continues spending money against Republicans in primaries, in the hopes that a more conservative (and less electable) replacement could be found.
Some members deserve to face stiff competition in primaries. I am not always pro-incumbent. But all too often, the Members the Club targets are moderate for a reason, and that moderation is because their districts are moderate.
I would rather have moderate Republicans than moderate Democrats in these districts. Moderate Republicans vote for conservative Republicans for Speaker, while moderate Democrats vote for Nancy Pelosi.
But Chocola and his team would rather have ideological purity. And they would rather have Republicans vote for budgets that slash defense spending irresponsibly than have them vote for conservative budgets that include tax reform, entitlement reform and a freeze on discretionary spending.