Redstate

It is time for a return to conservative principles, and Blunt has failed to stand up for them. He is part of the leadership, not just the strong arm man. And yet he did nothing to stop the prescription drug boondoggle, the NCLB act, and any number of bad policies that the rest of the leadership thought should be advanced. And worse, he actually helped pressure otherwise conservative members to abandon conservatism in favor of these bills. Sometimes that was done with implicit threats and arm-twisting.

That is not leadership. If he were really a successful conservative, then there wouldn't have been any bills out thre that required middle of the night arm twisting and 4 hour votes.

And there is a simple fact that everyone seems to ignore in promoting people like Blunt - working from the minority is not the same as working from the majority, and requires different skills. The results of this election show that new leaders are needed. Whether you advocate for conservatives, or moderates, none of the current leadership should be immune from replacement.

The examples you give are proff to his effectiveness. His job being the whip was to makr sure those items got passed.

That said, he made an excellent speech renouncing NCLB and advocating a return to limited government.

The speech is being largely ignored by people with their own agenda instead of looking for who can do the job best.

The speech ls located here. Give it a listen. The transcript is here.

I care about what he did. He was part of the Republican Leadership (from the begining) that lost the House, end of story. Now he gets to move along into obscurity.

Has to mean holding people accountable for what they're responsible for, not holding people accountable for things they're not.

He's right, it's a good speech. And the Boehner/Blunt team is NOT why Republicans lost -- DeLay and Hastert are why, and as I put it in another thread yesterday, Boehner and Blunt were unlucky enough to get caught holding the bag.

Is a good argument. As we saw earlier in the year, Shadegg just doesn't have the same kind of clout.

But let me defend Boehner here -- Boehner used to be a squish on immigration, but has since converted and is willing to fight on this one. Pence is terrific on just about every issue except... immigration. His alternate reform plan wasn't much better than the one the former GOP House majority was instrumental in delaying. (If anyone's asking what Blunt and Boehner DID DO last Congress, well, that was no small achievement.)

So my compromise solution: Keep the current team in place until the Bush/Democrat amnesty plan is killed, and then we can talk.

Crazy things can happen in a three-way race. Don't blame Shadegg, the late-comer, for that.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

....that 'the Bush/Democrat amnesty plan' isn't going to be killed. It's going to pass.

Clearly this needs to be restated; the faction of the country that favors a much stricter illegal immigrant policy lost last week's elections. They might claim that they have the people and the right behind them; but they don't have the votes, and the votes are what counts right now.

I don't say this to be hurtful, but these are the facts on the ground. I mean, come on: because of last Tuesday, the fence is back in play.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

We'd obviously need Democrats to cross over and support us. Considering how many of them are "Lou Dobbs Democrats" as Jacob Weisberg said at Slate, we might have a shot. So many Blue Dogs are anti-trade, this is one time where their idiocy on that issue could actually bleed over into opposing the "comprehensive" plan.

Even if that didn't work, Blunt would surely hold the votes together better than Shadegg, and send a stronger message.