- Goodbye to one of the remaining constitutionalists…
- The reason why Republicans exist…
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Dear reader,
I note that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) succumbed to a primary challenge this Tuesday.
The challenger, the victor, was a certain Edward Gallrein.
I know little about this Gallrein fellow. I am not certain Kentuckians know much about him either… as he would not debate the incumbent Massie.
I know merely that he is a former military man. Further, that he has pledged unswerving loyalty to President Trump.
The president did not believe Rep. Massie manifested that same loyalty to his person or to his political agenda.
The Mother’s Milk of Politics
The president — for example — could never look past the Kentucky congressman’s “nay” vote concerning his signature “big, beautiful bill.”
And the president sets great store by personal loyalty. He could not locate it in Rep. Massie.
I know also that Mr. Gallrein’s campaign was funded, heavily, by very wealthy donors consecrated to Rep. Massie’s toppling.
And as is said, “money is the mother’s milk of politics.”
In quantities exceeding even than the state’s choicest bourbon… the mother’s milk of politics surged through Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District — some $34 million worth in all.
The heaping majority of it came in against Rep. Massie.
Thus Rep. Massie is vanquished.
Massie Is One of the Good Guys
I concede it at once: Rep. Massie’s vanquishing depresses my already languishing spirits. Why?
I believe he is the nearest thing to a principled politician than a man can find in a month of Sundays.
No, in two months of Sundays — perhaps even three or four months of Sundays.
Thus I consider Rep. Massie a sort of heir to “Dr. No.” I refer of course to the congressman Ron Paul, who sorted into the same rare category.
“Dr.” because he was an actual medical physician. “No” because he refused to get behind legislation that lacked specific warrant in the United States Constitution — even if his own party was behind it.
I believe Rep. Massie is a man of similar kidney. I believe the liver and lights within Ron Paul are the liver and lights within Thomas Massie.
He is a man, so far as I can discern, truly dedicated to the principles of limited government and individual liberty in which so many of his fellows profess to embrace… but fail in practice to observe.
No to the “Ticking Debt Time Bomb”
Reports The Christian Science Monitor:
Mr. Massie… who was first elected to Congress in 2012 during the tea party wave, has always been a somewhat different kind of Republican. He describes himself as a true conservative — anti-abortion and pro-gun, opposed to foreign aid and foreign wars. A deficit hawk, he has for years proudly worn a ticking “debt clock” on his lapel.
And if he grazes against the grain of his own political party? Well then he grazes against the grain of his own political party.
If he is a thorn in the president’s flesh? Well then he is a thorn in the president’s flesh.
Rep. Massie was one of only two Republican representatives to shake his head against the president’s big, beautiful bill… and vote nay.
The Kentuckian labeled the legislation a “ticking debt bomb,” adding that:
I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.
“It Was Easier to Land a Rocket Backwards Than Get Anyone in Washington to Cut $100 of Spending”
Yet well does Rep. Massie know the near impossibility of fiscal prudence in Washington. Of the failed Department of Government Efficiency — the predictably failed Department of Government Efficiency, he quipped:
- They ran DOGE out of town; Elon Musk discovered it was easier to land a rocket backwards than get anyone in Washington to cut $100 of spending.
Meantime, Rep. Massie is an extremely rare creature in Washington. That is because he is a congressman whose cranial cavity is populated not by rocks — but by actual brain tissue.
The fellow earned two engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
What is more, he is an actual inventor credited with some 30 patents on file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A United States congressman with 30 patents? As well imagine a purple cow, a circular square, a good government.
Alas, Rep. Massie’s vast intellectual candle power will no longer illuminate the dim chambers in which it is so sorely required.
Yet perhaps his toppling was inevitable. His presence in Washington was, in several respects, an anachronism.
He is simply a man of an era that is bygone.
The Purpose of Republicans
I expect Democrats to spent grandly and gorgeously. Since Roosevelt II it has read the identical electoral blueprint.
Yet as I have argued before: Republicans traditionally existed for two purposes: to lower taxes — and to square the books.
You wished to spend money you did not have? And throw open the Treasury to the public?
“No!” was the resounding answer.
Like a sour old schoolmarm with steel in her eye and a rattan in her hand… they might not have been popular.
But you knew where they were. And you could trust them with the checkbook.
But these Republicans are largely extinct.
They have gone the route of fedoras, monocles and spats.
The New Catechism
Republicans turned away from their old-time fiscal religion, made their peace with Big Government… and got elected.
They labelled the old religion “root canal economics.”
Republicans instead sat at the feet of Mr. Arthur Laffer, with his famous curve.
They could spend like Democrats — without elevating taxes.
Deficits do not matter in the new catechism.
Only a handful of stalwarts remain… to keep the tablets of tradition.
Rep. Massie will no longer stand among them. And so, I confess, a pearl of sorrow courses down my cheek this day.
A Bipartisan Betrayal
Yet as I have also argued before:
Republicans once defended the approaches to the United States Treasury — or attempted to at least.
Yet they have long since sold the pass. And both parties have sold us all down a river.
I wish you my heartiest best in all your future endeavors, Thomas Massie.
Like a well-intentioned yet misguided preacher set down among the residents of a cathouse…you are an alien of Washington.
You simply do not belong there.
No higher compliment is possible.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
