Ellsworth: The Real Story

If you're one of the few regular visitors to this site, then you have probably heard by now that the BRAC voted 8-1 against closing Ellsworth Air Force base in western South Dakota. While other blogs have discussed the major implications for Sen. John Thune, who defeated then-Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle by making the case that he would be better positioned to save Ellsworth, they have missed the even larger implications for next year's Senate races.

It is a dirty not so little secret that politicians are like pigs at the trough when it comes to reelection/career oriented appropriations. Rather than aiming for sound policy, politicians of both parties are more interested in bringing money home to their districts from Washington than allowing people to keep more of the money we earn. They then use the fact that they brought these goodies home as a campaign issue. While some such programs - very, very few - are legitimate, the vast majority are just excuses to keep taxes rediculously high.

Whether Ellsworth was actually protected for legitimate reasons, though - a question on which I am agnostic since I simply do not know enough about military policies to speak intelligently about it - there is a larger story in this story. Republicans currently hold 55 Senate seats, including RINOs. Barring full scale nuclear war, and even then only if we're losing, Republicans will not lose the Senate next year. What that means is that every Republican in every state can make the argument in the general election that they will be better positioned than their Democrat counterpart to bring money into their state. This will be especially important for Republican candidates in blue states, such as Steve Laffey in Rhode Island, but will also be important for Republicans more generally.

It speaks volumes that members of the Party of smaller government will run next year on a platform of porkbarrel spending. No, the Democrats are not any better. Ideally the Republicans elected because they will be able to "bring home the bacon" will instead not kill the pigs that don't belong to them in the first place, i.e. enact tax cuts, cut federal spending, and allow the economy to grow faster. Unfortunately, such lofty goals are pipe dreams.

Though it is always disappointing to see Republicans campaign on bad policy, the fact is that we can make a tremendous amount of progress in other areas by exploiting this issue. Residents of every state should know that the best way to bring their money back into their states - fair enough if we're the ones paying the taxes in the first place - is to elect Republicans. In the RedState.org post linked above, the case is made that the decision was not political. Saving Ellsworth may in fact be good policy, but the decision was overtly political. The BRAC rewarded South Dakota for sending Daschle packing. Had he been reelected, the overwhelming likelihood is that the vote would have gone the other way. Painful though it may be, Republicans, even (gulp) conservatives, must exploit this issue for the next fourteen months to expand our majority. Once we do that, hopefully moving the caucus to the right in the process (plus Ed Bryant, Steve Laffey, Steve Urquhart, Mark Kennedy, John Hritz, and John Hoeven, minus Bill Frist, Lincoln Chafee, Orrin Hatch, and Mike DeWine), we will be in a much better position to reform government on any number of issues, including federal spending.