I got an email from Contract From America, stating George Allen signed their contract.
U.S. Senate Candidate George Allen (R-VA) First Candidate in Virginia to Sign Contract from America in 2012 Cycle
The Contract from America Foundation announced today that U.S. Senate candidate George Allen (R-VA) has joined over 70 currently elected Senators and Congressmen nationwide by listening to the wishes of his constituents and signing the “Contract from America,” a Main Street, tea party-driven legislative blueprint for 2011 and beyond. He is the first to do so in Virginia for the 2012 election cycle.
Ryan Hecker, one of the organizers of the Contract from America, elaborated: “George Allen, by signing the Contract from America, has shown himself to be a true champion of Main Street and tea party values. He has illustrated that, if elected, he will listen to his constituents and be a true grassroots conservative leader in the Senate. We are especially glad that George is the first candidate in Virginia to sign the Contract in the 2012 cycle.”
In signing this bottom-up call for economic conservative and good governance reform, George Allen stated:
“Virginians are anxious about the struggling economy, out-of-control spending, and growing debt that is threatening to rob our children of the opportunities we had. Rather than the dictates, mandates and tax hikes coming out of Washington we need a pro-growth agenda based on our foundational principles of freedom, personal responsibility and opportunity for all. In the U.S. Senate I pledge to protect and build upon the basic principles of the Contract from America – individual liberty, limited government and economic freedom.”
Visit Mr. Allen’s campaign website: www.georgeallen.com
I do not know Virginia politics. I have never lived in Virginia. I spent 44+ years in Ohio. I now live in Texas, having spent the last 1+ years in Texas. That means I know Ohio politics. But I know George Allen was Governor of Virginia and was a US Senator from Virginia before the Democrat wave elections threw him out. My question is this: Did George Allen sign the contract for cynical, political reasons? Did he sign the contract to get votes? Will he stay true to the contract or is he using it as a tool to get elected?
My own position is rather simple to understand, but difficult to implement, even for me. Every Congressman (that’s not a sexist term, but a gender-neutral term) should come from the private sector. Every Congressman should return to the private sector. That means term limits. And that means mandatory term limits. Not just “consecutive terms” variety but the lifetime standard for term limits. That also means eradicating pensions for former politicians, to include current political pensioners. When politicians leave Congress and have to make a living under the laws Congress pass, those politicians will necessarily be much more reticent toward Government power over the everyday lives of private citizens and private enterprises.
And George Allen is a career politician who gets a heavy political pension paycheck every month. That is an absolutely huge “no” for me. Don’t get me wrong. If he is the absolute best candidate for office, despite his career politician standing, he should be elected. And signing the Contract From America is a very strong step toward that. Every person seeking office — national, statewide, local — should sign the Contract From America, and those who refuse to sign should be dinged, and dinged hard. But everyone who signs should also be seriously studied to determine if the signing is merely a cynical move or an actual affirmation of positions. And their feet should necessarily be held to the fire.
Now, George Allen is facing a TEA Party darling as an opponent in the 2012 Virginia US Senate Primary. Jamie Radtke has a strong and longer standing with positions that are TEA Party-supported. And she is not a politician but rather a member of the private sector. I, personally, support Jamie Radtke over George Allen, although I am hesitant to give her my full support. While I am strongly in favor of private-sector individuals to enter Congress, it remains true that those individuals have no track record. The vast majority of pro-opinion must necessarily be placed on issue positions instead of (nonexistent) track records. But Jamie Radtke’s issue positions are dead on and have been dead on from day one. George Allen, on the other hand, is a recent acceptant of TEA Party demands.
The Democrat, Webb, has chosen to retire after one term in the Senate, so any Democrat offered up will have no experience in the US Senate — and will be a Democratic sacrificial lamb as the Republicans retake the Virginia seat. So the key vote is in the Republican Primary: selecting the appropriate Republican candidate for the office.
Jamie Radtke is a TEA Party candidate. George Allen is a long-time Republican politician seeking a return to where he was before, so he is a known quantity. Virginians will have a choice between a known Republican who recently signed the Contract From America and an unknown who has been speaking TEA Party for a year or more. If I were Virginian, I’d vote Radtke in the Primary. But I’d vote for either one of them in the General.
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