March 21, 2010, will mark the high water mark of the American Left — if the Republican Party, the conservative movement generally and the Tea Party participants specifically keep the public’s eye on the key scorecard for the past year and a half.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC.org) should post a list of the 50 to 75 most vulnerable Democratic incumbents along with data on five votes, and then leave it to the activists to self-organize and execute independent campaigns against those candidates.
Those independent campaigns will begin immediately and run parallel to candidates’ campaigns when official nominees are chosen. The momentum of the moment cannot be shelved and won’t be directed from D.C.
It will, rather, gather activist energy from around the country and create virtual accountability projects for every Democrat who is remotely vulnerable in November. The NRCC need only point at those incumbents who face electorates where past voting patterns or current polling data indicate vulnerability, and the energized electorate will take over until nominees appear.
The key accountability votes are five, and this is the information that needs to accompany every November target list:
á Did the incumbent vote for Nancy Pelosi for House speaker?
á Did the incumbent vote for the “stimulus” package?
á Did the incumbent vote for “cap-and-tax”?
á Did the incumbent vote for Obamacare?
á Did the incumbent vote to protect the assault on the Constitution known as the “deem scheme” or “Slaughter Solution” when it was first challenged March 18 by Rep. Parker Griffith?
This last measure is one that will not fade from the voters’ minds as the months go by, any more than the other votes will regardless of how often President Obama and Pelosi assure us that “process doesn’t matter.”
The past week’s shenanigans have branded the congressional Democrats as a toxic combination of far-Left San Francisco ideology and thuggish Chicago-style tactics. The “deem scheme” made this the Kangaroo Congress of 2010, and that record will follow all of them through November.
The Senate will take up “reconciliation” and thus face its own withering week or weeks of public scrutiny. Having forced their House colleagues to vote for the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator Aid and who knows what else, the forces of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are going to engage in another series of jam-down votes.
The doomed-in-November Blanche Lincoln will do her best to distance herself from this fiasco, but her vote — and the vote of every other Democrat — in December to push Obamacare forward saddled the country with this procedural outrage and this substantive fiasco. Every Senate Democrat is responsible for where we are because every Senate Democrat could have prevented it.
November 2010 will be an exercise in accountability — and of renewal. Democrats have forced the country into hard-Left action after hard-Left action, and the country gets a chance to say — again — stop in seven short months.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
