Aaron Hankins is out to show voters that there are differences between true conservatives and self-serving Republican careerists.

Peggy Noonan’s recent observation that George Bush destroyed the Republican Party was true, but the brevity of her statement left unspoken a thousand nuances. He was not a conservative, but he clearly failed in trying to redefine the philosophy of conservatism. He finalized Republicans’ distrust of politicians, but especially of their own politicians. He did not create a legacy worth preserving, which is why a void now exists wherein we are left to redefine a party.

The latitude we have to do that on a national scale is sadly – if expectedly – lacking. But within the purview of our own communities, we have an ability to shape something unique; something that can escape the meddlesome hands of national powerbrokers.

One illustrative example is Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. Democratic incumbent Baron Hill and former Republican incumbent Mike Sodrel have run against each other in every election since 2002. Hill has won twice; Sodrel, once.

In many ways, Sodrel is an emblem of the national Republican Party. When Rep. Mike Pence’s Republican Study Committee (RSC) introduced House Amendment 832 in 2006 as an amendment to the proposed 2007 budget, Republicans controlled the House by a nearly thirty-member majority. They had the power to reform government. They had a mandate — more than that, a calling – from their constituencies to limit the growth of government.

Their proposal would have balanced the federal budget by 2011 and reduced the federal deficit by $392 billion over five years. It failed by a vote of 94-331, thereby accommodating Bush’s request that federal spending increase by $70 billion in addition to the 42% it had already risen between 2001-2006. (The final budget passed by a vote of 218-210.)

Though it did not pass, the amendment was useful in differentiating the principled from the Establishment. Mike Sodrel, Tom Delay, and child abuser Mark Foley all voted in opposition.

Sodrel is essentially a carbon copy of the New Age Republicans. By incident, he got some votes right. But it was not because his beliefs were premised on any sort of platform that led him to have a consistent record; it was because his party led him from one poll-created end goal to another. Among his mistakes were voting for the Patriot Act, some other privacy-infringing surveillance legislation, and so on.

One voter explained switching her vote between Reps. Sodrel and Hill: "I felt like with Baron Hill, he didn't do a lot of the things he said he was going to. But then neither did the other guy, so now what am I going to do?”

In political climates such as this one, it is possible to make a difference by presenting a contrast that allows voters to understand that these New Age Republicans are not exclusive titleholders to the party. Even if conservatives are not always able to win, they will at least help voters to understand the differences between true conservatives and self-serving Republican careerists.

To that end, Aaron Hankins is running against Sodrel for the Republican endorsement. For this column, he commented that, “Conservatism is winning in America,” but at the same time, “corruption and careerism has led to our nation's broken government.” He reaffirmed my thesis, that:

The biggest threat to freedom and our way of life is careerism. Careerism led to corruption and to big government, and it has destroyed people's confidence in government. Career politicians' top priority is not serving the people and advancing our conservative principles of limited government, fiscal discipline and individual liberty but rather serving their own interests while preserving their own political careers.

In response to what he was most concerned about:

One of the biggest moral issues facing our nation is career politicians spending our children's future and enslaving them to debt.  Egregious earmarks, escalating entitlement spending along with increasing deficit spending are leading our nation to fiscal ruin.”
 
The role of the federal government is to protect innocent life, provide a strong national defense and secure our unalienable rights of individual liberty consistent with the rule of law. It is not to preserve political power for the elite while wasting our hard earned tax dollars.

Indeed. Though the future cannot be won overnight, it can be influenced through incremental victories. By challenging the status quo to survive opponents who have more to offer than just themselves, we may find that the electorate was looking for something more. It simply needed to find it first.