Cato

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our seventh candidate profile is on Missouri's Vicky Hartzler:

Although Ike Skelton, the long-time representative in Missouri’s fourth congressional district, was far from a supporter of LGBT equality, Vicky Hartzler, who defeated him in this year’s election, has based her political career on supporting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

A former state legislator, she was the spokeswoman and public face of the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, which successfully amended the state constitution to include a ban same-sex marriage (which was already banned by statute) in 2004. The New York Times writes that her group used “church functions, yard signs and a ‘marriage chain’ of rallies across the state,” and Hartzler “said she hoped that the outcome would send a loud message to the rest of the country: ‘Here in the heartland we have a heart for families, and this is how deeply we feel about marriage.’”

Her work helped her receive praise from Religious Right leaders like Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Penny Nance of Concerned Women PAC.

Mother Jones asked if Hartzler was the “most anti-gay candidate in America” since she believes that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will “put us at risk,” maintains that sexual orientation is a choice and therefore gay people aren’t entitled to civil rights, and dubbed hate crimes legislation one of the “the extreme agenda items of the gay movement.”

Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign told Mother Jones that while “Ike Skelton has not been a friend of the LGBT community,” unlike Hartzler, “he does not wake up in the morning thinking about what he can do to harm the LGBT community.”

A staunch anti-choice activist, Hartzler supported legislation which “would have allowed for prosecutors to charge women who obtained late-term abortions with murder” and “also have permitted second-degree murder charges to be filed against doctors who performed such procedures.” She was also the chief sponsor of a bill that would pressure women seeking an abortion to view their sonograms. Throughout her career in the State House, she consistently received perfect ratings from the right-wing Missouri Family Network.

Hartzler wrote a book for Christian activists running for office called “Running God’s Way: Step by Step to a Successful Political Campaign,” which “discusses how to run a political campaign by using events and stories in the bible as a guide.” Phyllis Schlafly gave her a laudatory introduction at an Eagle Forum event, calling her book “a manual for action.”

In a profile by the American Family Association, Hartzler said that she found inspiration from God to run for public office at the age of nine, and her book maintains that “Christians must become more active in politics if they are to have the impact God calls them to have.” Hartzler said that her book provides Christian candidates with “the tools and inspiration they need to bring God’s light in a darkening world.”

According to one sympathetic review in a local newspaper, Hartzler’s book “praises Absalom — a rebellious son of King David, God’s anointed leader for Israel and according to Christian theology an early example of divinely ordained rule prefiguring that of Jesus Christ — as being the “first politician” and an example for modern political leaders. In Hartzler’s words, ‘Absalom won over the hearts of the people of Israel using time-tested campaign strategies. We, too, can campaign successfully following these same guidelines.’”

A climate change denier, Hartzler asserted that she does not believe in climate change since she read “some articles that [said] it’s actually decreasing, that we have climates getting colder…and certainly, I don’t believe that if there is a climate change that man has a very significant role in that.”

Hartzler ran an ugly anti-immigrant ad against Ike Skelton, where she claimed that by voting to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program he supports “welfare benefits” for “illegal immigrants”, and criticized him for opposing a measure that would prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public schools as “giving illegal immigrants free education.”

She appealed to Tea Partiers by slamming government spending, as she blasted Congress’s spending plans and said that “we just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.” However, according to the Kansas City Star, Hartzler’s “farm has received $774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.” She defended the government farm subsidies as a “national defense issue,” and claimed that she would not support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or defense.

In an editorial board interview she couldn’t name any programs she would cut funding to other than “the Lady Bird Highway Beautification projects. She indicated that garden clubs could do some of this work along the highways, saving public funds.”

However, Hartzler does appear to support spending money to expand the role of the Navy in Missouri, as she argued that under Skelton’s watch the landlocked state has “the smallest Navy here that we have had since the early 1960s.”

Hartzler blended her Tea Party lip service and Religious Right advocacy to topple one of the most powerful members of the House, and will now bring her years of anti-equality and anti-choice activism to become a prominent voice of the Far-Right in the GOP-led House.

Though the Religious Right was universally outraged by Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling striking down Proposition, only the American Family Association went so far as to demand his immediate impeachment:

Judge Walker's ruling is not "good Behaviour." He has exceeded his constitutional authority and engaged in judicial tyranny.

Judges are not, in fact, unaccountable. They are accountable to Congress, which can remove them from office.

Impeachment proceedings, according to the Constitution, begin in the House of Representatives. It's time for you to put your congressman on record regarding the possible impeachment of Judge Walker.

Yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, was the guest on Bryan Fischer's radio program and Fischer wanted to know if they had any plans to try and impeach Walker and Smith told him flat-out that it wasn't going to happen:

Fischer: Judges are in fact accountable to Congress, they have the power of impeachment, they serve only during good behavior. It's my opinion that this is bad behavior. Is there any sense in which the House of Representatives would consider this an impeachable offense for a judge?

Smith: We have done a lot of research on that subject, since I'm the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and quite frankly this doesn't rise to the normal level of impeachment, as much as we might disagree with the opinion. Ultimately, of course, the solution is to elect presidents who will appoint federal judges who do not legislate from the bench and who do not engage in judicial activism. But I do not think that we would be successful in an impeachment move, but it doesn't mean that we can't do something about it by way of a resolution, by way of making elections about these kinds of appointments.

I guess I should point out that Walker was nominated to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan.

Last week I mentioned that the National Taxpayer Protest is scheduled for September 12.  Hosted by a variety of right-wing and anti-tax groups like the National Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, Young America’s Foundation, The Club for Growth and many others, the effort seeks to bring millions of Americans to Washington D.C. for an organized and centralized TEA party-like protest:

It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!

And they have some pretty big plans:

"Our mission is to present a unified voice of concern over the current administration's policies regarding taxation, our economy, foreign and domestic policy, as well as our individual constitutional rights as American citizens," said Grassfire national coordinator Darla Dawald in an open invitation to the public to join the Sept. 12 taxpayer march in Washington, D.C. "America is in trouble, the problems and issues are broad and complex and it will take a monumental effort to stop, change and reverse the destructive course that this administration and Congress has put us on. Together, We the People can effect that change!"

On Sept. 10 and 11, the groups will host grassroots training seminars and Sept. 11 "We'll Never Forget" memorial. The taxpayer march is scheduled to begin at the Lincoln Memorial at 10 a.m. Sept. 12 and culminate with a rally at 1 p.m. in front of the Capitol.

The National Taxpayer Protest website offers detailed information on travel and hotel accommodations, including directions to the event. Tea party attendees may RSVP there as well.

More than 9,000 people have already registered through the protest website, and the number is growing rapidly.

"Obama managed to have 4 million show up at the Capitol grounds," Dawald told WND. "We need to do the same if not more. The financial situation is dire, but as one gentleman said, 'If I have to sell my belongings and crawl there, I will – because it's that important!'"

I assume that when Dawald says Obama had 4 million show up at the Capitol, she's referring to the crowd that attended his inauguration, although the estimated size for that event was actually only 1.8 million.

But heck, if they want to set 4 million attendees as their goal, who am I to complain?

And frankly, with a thrilling proposedl line-up like this, I can't see how they could possibly fail to reach that lofty goal:

Invited Speakers and Guests (for the 3 day event) Include:

Dick Armey - FreedomWorks (CONFIRMED)
C. Boyden Gray - FreedomWorks (CONFIRMED)
Steve Forbes - FreedomWorks Foundation
Yaron Brook - Ayn Rand Center for Individual Liberty
Chris Chocola - Club for Growth
Grover Norquist - Americans for Tax Reform
John Tate - Campaign for Liberty
Mike Tanner - Cato Institute
Dan Mitchell - Cato Institute

John Stossel
George Will
Tucker Carlson
Michael Barone
M. Stanton Evans
Thomas Sowell
Andrew Napolitano
Thomas Woods
Peter Schiff
Michelle Malkin
Glenn Reynolds
P.J. O’Rourke
Drew Carey
Andrew Breitbart
Jonah Goldberg
Penn & Teller
John Allison
John Mackey
Dennis Miller
Rick Scott

Sen. Jim DeMint
Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Jeb Hensarling
Rep. Jeff Flake
Rep. Doug Lamborn
Rep. Virginia Foxx
Rep. Marsha Blackburn
Rep. Tom Price
Rep. Scott Garrett
Rep. Mike Pence
Rep. Michele Bachmann
Rep. Paul Broun
Rep. Todd Tiahrt
Rep. Tom McClintock

Glenn Beck - Fox News
Neil Cavuto - Fox News
Laura Ingraham
Mark Levin

The folks over at PFAW's blog must have at least pulled a muscle when they stretched to take a swipe at Cato's Andrew Coulson. Here's PFAW's account: Earlier this month, Andrew wrote a column in the Indianapolis Star critical of Indiana University's Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. CEEP periodically polls Indianans on school choice, and recent poll results have shown declining support for school choice among respondents. Andrew's principal complaints: CEEP's financial ties to IU's Department of Education make the group biased against school choice, and the question design was flawed. CEEP's Jonathan Plucker fired back that CEEP is financially independent of IUDOE; that the costs of the poll are likewise paid by CEEP to prevent any hint of bias; and that CEEP works with outside polling experts to make sure the results are accurate and reliable.

However, PFAW oddly fails to mention that, five days after the column ran in the Indy Star, Coulson subsequently posted this on Cato's blog.

In a recent op-ed for the Indianapolis Star, I wrote that Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) had a vested interest in finding school choice to be unpopular with voters — because it was a part of the University’s Department of Education, and that department could well be rendered obsolete under a large scale school choice program. As it turns out, the Center is largely financially independent of the Department, and so would not likely go down with the ship under a voucher or education tax credit program.