How Republicans Can Build a Big-Tent Party, It’s the Democrats who won’t tolerate a diversity of views., By JIM DEMINT

Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party this week is no reason for Republicans to cheer. But his reason for leaving — he faced an unwinnable primary election next year — is no cause for soul searching. There is a question Republicans do need to ask: What is it that binds our party together?

In the wake of two successive electoral defeats and the likelihood of a 60-vote Democrat majority in the Senate, what does it even mean to be a Republican today? Moderate Republicans are right to remind conservatives that they cannot build a center-right coalition without the center part. And conservatives are right to remind moderates that Republicans only succeed when we rally around clear principles.

The real mistake is that Republicans became more concerned with staying in D.C. than reforming it.

Despite notable successes at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., it seems to me that Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration forgot a simple truth. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you aim for principled reform, you win elections in the bargain; if you just aim for elections, you get neither.

No Child Left Behind didn’t win us “soccer moms,” but it did cost us our credibility on locally controlled education. Medicare prescription drugs didn’t win us a “permanent majority,” but it cost us our credibility on entitlement reform. Every year, another Republican quality was tainted: managerial competence, fiscal discipline and personal ethics.

To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a “big tent” party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party — the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can’t agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.

If the American people want a European-style social democracy, the Democratic Party will give it to them. We can’t win a bidding war with Democrats.

Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges. Our party benefits from national-security debates; but Republicans can start from the premise that the U.S. is an exceptional nation and force for good in history. We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.

Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don’t want to make decisions for them. That’s why I’m working to reduce Washington’s grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals, so that Northeastern Republicans, Western Republicans, Southern Republicans, and Midwestern Republicans can define their own brands of Republicanism. It’s the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice — in education, health care, energy and more. It’s OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.

A Republican recommitment to freedom and limited government will foster an agenda that will strengthen and invigorate our party. Freedom has worked for our party and our country before. It will again, if we let it.

Mr. DeMint is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

Sen. Jim DeMint got yet another award for his strong principles on taxes and spending. I’m glad to see Sen. get recognition, yet I’m disappointed that there aren’t more conservatives in Washington to share these awards with.

National Taxpayers Union: For Immediate Release, Thursday, Contact:, Pete Sepp, Natasha Altamirano (703) 683-5700

Senator Jim DeMint Honored as “Taxpayers’ Best Friend” for Third Year in a Row

WASHINGTON – The nation’s largest taxpayer group today recognized Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) for achieving the best pro-taxpayer voting record in the U.S. Senate last year. The 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), a nonpartisan citizen group, has announced that Sen. DeMint was the top Senate scorer in its annual Rating of Congress for the third year in a row.

“If every Member of Congress voted as responsibly as Sen. DeMint did in 2008, Americans would enjoy much lower taxes and less government waste,” NTU President Duane Parde said. “Jim DeMint’s record speaks for itself: He has truly earned the title of ‘Taxpayers’ Best Friend.’”

Sen. DeMint is among only a few dozen 2008 “Taxpayers’ Friend Award” recipients out of the entire House of Representatives and Senate. The award is given to Representatives and Senators who achieve an “A” grade in NTU’s annual Rating of Congress. The Rating, which is based on every roll call vote affecting fiscal policy, assigns a “Taxpayer Score” to each Member of Congress that indicates his or her support for reducing or controlling federal spending, taxes, debt, and regulation. For 2008, a total of 182 House and 104 Senate votes were selected.

“Jim DeMint’s pro-taxpayer score of 96 percent was the highest in the entire Senate,” Parde continued. “By consistently voting to reduce federal spending, taxes, and debt, Sen. DeMint has demonstrated he is a true leader in the fight to defend overburdened taxpayers across the nation.”

Between 2007 and 2008, the average “Taxpayer Score” in the House rose slightly from 35 percent to 36 percent. The Senate’s average dropped by five points, from 37 percent to 32 percent. In 2008, 48 lawmakers attained scores sufficient to win the “Taxpayers’ Friend Award” (at least 80 percent in the House and 76 percent in the Senate). Meanwhile, a record 267 Senators and Representatives captured the title of “Big Spender” for posting “F” grades (scores of 25 percent or less in the House and 14 percent or less in the Senate).

Unlike those of other organizations, NTU’s annual Rating does not simplistically focus on only a handful of equally weighted “key votes.” For this reason, it has received praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including the late Sen. (and “Golden Fleece Award” creator) William Proxmire (D-WI).

“Given today’s economic climate, fiscal discipline is more important now than ever,” Parde concluded. “Hard-working families in South Carolina and across the country owe Jim DeMint a debt of gratitude for his hard work on their behalf.”

NTU is a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels. Note: The 2008 Rating and a searchable Rating database from 1992 to 2008 is available at www.ntu.org.

APRIL 29, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

      Senator Bryant Opposes Teacher Furlough Budget 

      Senator Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) today voted against the budget passed by the South Carolina Senate because it resulted in the firing of thousands of teachers. Senator Bryant said that, “I opposed the Senate budget because it compels the termination of thousands of public school teachers across South Carolina. I supported yesterday the Ryberg/Davis proposal which funded education in the classroom at the highest level in the history of South Carolina and ensured that all teachers would be in the classroom next year. The majority of the Senate rejected that. I cannot support their proposal to throw teachers into the street.”

      Senator Bryant noted that, “The Senate budget ensures that not only will thousands of teachers be shown the door but also that children next year will go into a classroom with twenty-five or thirty or more of their fellow students. Education, the real learning in the classroom, will only occur through the chaos that results from crowded classrooms and fewer teachers. Next year parents across South Carolina will be saying that, ‘Never have so many students learned so little from so few teachers.’”

      Senator Bryant called upon the House of Representatives to reconsider the priorities of the budget and fully fund teachers in the classroom. Senator Bryant said that, “We provided a budget that fully funds classroom teachers. Teachers will only lose their jobs if the politicians in Columbia give in to the status quo.” 

      We voted against H. 3560, the General Appropriations Bill, for several reasons. First, the bill reflects a complete lack of prioritization. Public Safety agencies including SLED, DPS and Corrections are gutted while local projects and secondary or even tertiary government functions, receive adequate funding. Public education suffers an unnecessary cut that truly reflects a false choice between classroom teachers and other functions of government. The falsehood of the premise that teachers must lose their jobs because of the current level of state revenue offends the sensibility of those who truly view public education as a core mission of state government.

      Second, the plethora of amendments offered to shore up Public Safety with surplus money in reserve funds or other bureaucracies were tabled by overwhelming votes which reflected the absolute indifference of the Senate toward the first priority of a democratic government, the safety of its citizens.

      Third, amendments to this budget which espouse, invite and demand the acceptance of the outstanding stimulus money do nothing less than usurp not only the Constitution of South Carolina but also the organic sensibilities of a free people. The decision, in this budget, of the Senate of South Carolina, to demand that the governor exercise a right that both state and federal law, along with more than one legal opinion, leave solely to his discretion leaves all who believe in the separation of powers in dismay.

      Thomas Paine noted in 1776 that, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” The destruction of the wall between the legislative and executive branches, a wall not very high and not very strong in the beginning, simply reveals that the status of South Carolina as a legislatively-dominated state lives on with the passage of this budget—indeed that status is cemented. The tyranny of the majority lives on in South Carolina, but we stand in defiance. Bright, Bryant, Grooms, Mulvaney, Rose, Ryberg, Shoopman, Verdin

The Post and Courier

Give school tax credits a try

Expanding school choice expands educational opportunities. So why limit school choice to the public education system?

The obvious answer: politics. The education establishment remains a powerful force influencing state legislatures — and Congress. It also remains steadfastly opposed to helping even small numbers of poor children transfer to private schools from public schools that are shortchanging them.

Against that familiar backdrop, an S.C. Senate education subcommittee held a hearing at the Statehouse Thursday to consider arguments for and against proposed legislation that would provide tax credits and scholarships for low-income and special-needs children to transfer from struggling public schools to private schools.

We hope the senators fulfilled the “hearing” purpose by listening closely to a woman whose son was bringing home high marks as a fifth-grader at a public school in Myrtle Beach. As our Yvonne Wenger reported, that mother then discovered that her son, who has dyslexia, was reading below the fifth-grade level.

So the family found a better school for him — private Trident Academy in Mount Pleasant. The family decided that the financial demands of private-school tuition and a second residence 100 miles from home was worth it. Yet many families in our state can’t afford that educational choice.

Also at Thursday’s hearing, S.C. Education Superintendent Jim Rex reprised the familiar charge that private schools are not “accountable.” That stale argument ignores the fundamental accountability that comes with an informed family’s educational choice.

Too bad that the bill appears doomed, and that the man who introduced it, longtime civil-rights activist Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, has become the target of harsh criticism for daring to challenge the orthodoxy of the public-education lobby — and of the civil-rights hierarchy.

That’s despite the results of a new survey reporting that black voters in South Carolina, by 43-40 percent, favor using state-funded scholarships to private schools for children in public schools that don’t meet their needs. The same poll showed 53 percent of black voters believe that a tax-credit or scholarship program giving families the option of a private school for their children would improve the state’s abysmal high school graduation rate.

Tax-credit foes, including the Rev. Joe Darby of Charleston, first vice-president of the state NAACP, challenged the significance of the poll, pointing out that it was funded by a group that advocates using public funds for private-school choice.

But it seems only natural for parents to seek educational alternatives when their children attend public schools that deliver consistently dismal academic results. Some poor children have become much better students after leaving such schools to attend private schools — including most of the children in a pilot voucher program for approximately 1,700 low-income students in the high-cost, low-performance Washington, D.C., public school system. That program was recently pushed to the brink of extinction by Congress and the U.S. Education Department.

You don’t have to be a conservative ideologue to be dismayed by the looming elimination of that promising voucher system, which had earned good grades in an education department study. A scathing editorial last week in The Washington Post, hardly a right-wing hotbed, focused on the private-school choices made by many federal-lawmaker parents as “the gap between what Congress practices and what it preaches.” The editorial also accurately reported: “No one has been able to offer any evidence of the drawbacks of this small, local program, while evidence of its benefits has been mounting.”

Those benefits don’t make vouchers or tax credits for private school a panacea for American education. Not every private school has the room or inclination to take transfers from public schools. Not every area has sufficient private-school space to make that approach feasible.

But why not craft limited choice programs that include private-school options, like the one in Washington? With this year’s tax-credit bill evidently stymied, why not create a pilot program along the lines of the successful Washington model?

Just because such programs can’t benefit every child doesn’t mean they shouldn’t benefit any child. And just because foes of vouchers and tax credits are so adamant — and so politically powerful — doesn’t mean lawmakers should ignore the continuing plight of children stuck in public schools that aren’t educating them.

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