The new Republican majority has officially controlled the chamber for nearly month, and until Wednesday, not a single Republican House Member had broken ranks on any roll call vote. And the first defector is a maverick, but a character rarely assused of being a RINO (Republican in Name Only): Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC).
The roll call in question was a sensible measure that would abolish public financing for presidential campaigns and national party conventions. These practices are unfair to political minorities (like Libertarians, Greens, etc. that were mostly unable to qualify) and force Americans to pony up for political speech anathema, and sometimes offensive, to their own beliefs. The convention funding is a subsidy for the two big parties and undermines chances for more diversely competitive elections. The anti-campaign regulation Center for Competitive Politics noted “opponents struggled to explain how democracy survived after President Obama’s record-breaking $745 million 2008 campaign, during which he rejected taxpayer subsidies.”
