Pence crunches the numbers

BY THE time that Rep. Mike Pence,  the hard-right guy from Indiana, arrives in Akron Friday evening to speak at the Summit County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner, he may have had enough time to answer a question by MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell that he couldn't answer on her show: Will the GOP's counter-budget cut or increase the deficit?  The inquiry was quite appropriate for a severe critic of  President Obama's budget.  But Pence couldn't answer it, saying the GOP plan is a "broad outline" short on numbers.  But I'm sure it won't deter 

chairman Alex Arshinkoff from giving his guest a rousing welcome. No questions asked, of course.      

A Pence for your thoughts

THE SUMMIT COUNTY Republican Party apparently has not taken  seriously the voters' rejection of hard-core conservative "values" in the past presidential election.  How else can one explain the word from chairman Alex Arshinkoff that the headliner for this year's Lincoln Day Dinner (March 27) will be a red-meat right-wing Limbaugh-Rove-Gingrich-Palin conservative  Republican congressman from Indiana, Mike Pence?  It makes no sense for a crippled party to retreat farther into the depths of its own isolation from any semblance of mainstream moderation.  What could this political garrison have in mind, particularly in a county top-heavy with Democrats who have  shown little regard for the welfare of cliff-hanging conservatives?  

And who is Mike Pence?  Well, he describes himself as an evangelical Christian , or expanding on that, a Christian first, and a Republican afterward.  He will bring to the rostrum Friday night his well-pronounced  values of antis - anti-abortion, anti-stem cell and anti-stiff tax on Wall Street bonuses, having added the last one Thursday in his futile vote against the bill.  (Rushbo loved that one.)   But in all fairness, Pence is not entirely wedded to negatives.  He is , and was, pro-Iraq war and pro-Bush tax cuts.  There are guys like Pence running around today that you don't even have to ask their names.  Reconstruct the "values" model and a Mike Pence figure automatically pops up.  

Frankly,   I shouldn't care less if the party faithful gathered over their salads and entrees to  watch old films of the army-McCarthy hearings.   But they shouldn't do it in the name of America's greatest president.  No, not Reagan.  Abraham Lincoln. The  gulf between the celebratory  fiction of the event and the historical truth of Lincoln's unique stature in the presidency is shameful.  Guys like Mike Pence, who boasts of his 100 pct. approval rating from the American Conservative Union,  only make it a mockery.

Eat well, folks, as I know you will. 

Back home in Indiana

TO FOLLOW UP on my earlier post about how the Republican Party persists in backing into the future, more evidence from the Bloomberg News  page:  Indiana's  Rep. Mike Pence, the former talk-show host and aspirant to Rush Limbaugh's "great chain of being," has been placed in the critical No. 3 position of House Conference Committee chairman.  Pence, one of the most conservative Republicans in  Congress, will play an influential role in shaping GOP's policy agenda in the new congress and has already indicated his desire to purify his colleagues with the ideology of Ronald Reagan.  Again, may I remind Mr. Pence that McCain and Palin sang the same song with historical elegance and where are they now?  Back in Plato's cave?