VT - Senate

Here's the inaugural Spirit of '94 post.

Richard Tarrant of Vermont is running for Senator Jim Jefford's seat.

Richard Tarrant's campaign Web site flashes a running tally of the national debt as a protest, he says, of the ``borrow-and-spend Republicans'' in Washington.

Tarrant is a Republican. He's also a candidate for Vermont's open U.S. Senate seat and among a group of party insurgents who want Republicans to reconcile their stated philosophy of fiscal restraint with the spending binge they've led over the past five years. The debt ticker is at $8.199 trillion and counting.

In a sick way, I've got to hand it to the Democrats. At least the Democrats are honest about the federal budget. They want more of our money and they want to spend it. The Republicans lately have not been so honest. The GOP's line is something like "we want less of your money, and we'll spend less too." Unfortunately it's not like that in practice.

"Fiscal responsibility is part of our Republican culture," said Tarrant, a 63-year-old millionaire who co-founded Burlington, Vermont-based software company IDX Systems Corp. "Any time we go away from that, I want to distance myself.''

Hear hear!

That Tarrant, who is vying to replace independent Senator James Jeffords, and lawmakers such as Representative Mike Pence and Senator John McCain are running hard on an issue that once was a cornerstone of the party platform illustrates the dilemma that the Republicans face before the November election to decide control of Congress.

Finally... some movement. It's too bad that Mike Pence was uninterested in the House Leadership race, but I heard his name mentioned for the '08 Presidential Race.

As for Senator McCain, he has a really long road to hoe to get back in the good graces of many Republicans and even moreso with Republican activists (the primary voting types) over his Campaign Finance Reform law.

Let's hope that there are more Republicans out there willing to run on fiscal discipline and restraint.

Spirit of '94 Posted by AlexC at February 3, 2006 12:11 PM