Health care: What we can do

The problems with our health care system stem not from too many market forces, but from too little. Editor: So argues Joshua Sharf, a regular on Backbone Radio and now also a candidate for the Colorado House, in his platform plank on health care. This and other issue statements appear on his website. For comparison, here's the website of his primary opponent. Below is the Sharf plank in full.

Health care in the United States is among the best in the world, but practically nobody likes the system. Our private insurance system is incomprehensible. Our public systems - accounting for fully half of healthcare spending - are expensive, restrictive, inefficient and unfair.

As a result of IRS rules, dating from WWII wage-and-price controls, exempting employer-paid insurance from income tax, many people even make job decisions based on the availability of health insurance.

Some have used this discontent to push for even greater government interference in the system. Calls for mandates, single-payer insurance, even socialized medicine, have become commonplace. The Governor's 208 Commission was stacked with members pre-disposed to further state intervention. The Commission rejected the one free-market proposal presented to it.

In addition, insurance is expensive because we're over-insured. If we bought car insurance like we buy health insurance, we'd have coverage for oil changes, and all have special truck-bed insurance, even for our sub-compacts. Typical health insurance cover routine needs that, for the most part, we could easily afford. And we are required to buy services that we will likely never use.

The government is simply not capable of determining what insurance best fits each of us. We are.

And for these services, we're not spending our own money. We see absolutely no monetary benefit from making smart consumerist choices in our health care. Therefore, there is no incentive for us to save money. Thanks to services like WebMD, we are increasingly consumerist when it comes to our treatment; there is no good reason why we can't adopt similar consumerist attitudes when it comes to payment.

The problems with our health care system stem not from too many market forces, but from too little. The solutions to our health care lie in re-introducing market forces.

Health Savings Accounts, combined with high-deductible catastophic insurance, provide the most efficient, most affordable combination of coverages.

While Medicare and prescription drug reform will have to wait for federal action, there is much we can do at the state level to make insurance and care more afforable for our citizens. We can:

* Change Colorado's Medicaid to more closely resemble HSAs, along the lines of South Carolina's reform;

* Encourage the use of Health Savings Accounts;

* Allow Coloradoans to buy out-of-state health insurance plans to encourage competition;

* Remove restrictions on walk-in clinics to allow Target, Costco, Wal-Mart to provide affordable basic medical care;

* Require hospitals and clinics to make outcome data available for informed consumer comparison.

Iraq bugout negates Obama's professed support for Israel

One of the first speeches Barack Obama gave after becoming the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party was to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In this speech, delivered on June 4, he began the difficult transformation of going from left-wing dove to progressive hawk. It is axiomatic that every nominee of both parties plays to his partisan base in the primaries and then tacks back to the "center" for the general election. In the case of Barack Obama, who has had tremendous success pandering to the lefties of his party, this tack will have to be something close to a sharp right turn. It will be exceedingly difficult for Obama to do -- something that was made abundantly clear in his speech to AIPAC. For Obama to be a credible Commander in Chief that is interested in protecting America's interests in the Middle East, he will have to become a close friend and abiding ally of Israel. Why? Because even with the nascent democracy in Iraq, Israel remains both the only thriving capitalist democracy in the Arab world and our only true politico-military ally. The U.S.-Israel alliance has been the cornerstone of our Mideast foreign policy since the late 1960s, and American Jews remain a powerful (if reliably Democrat) voting block. The speech to AIPAC was Obama's chance to show his bona fides in his support for Israel. Not surprisingly, the speech centered on the growing threat of Iran in the region.

Why Iran? Because Iran remains the single most pressing security threat to both Israel and Iraq. The mullahs have been proactively building a nuclear bomb and the missile technology to deliver it, and with a range that is capable of striking both Baghdad and Jerusalem. They have been sending weapons into Iraq with impunity, and those weapons have been used to kill both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians with lethal effectiveness. They actively support Hezbollah which has been fighting the Israeli army along the Lebanon border and which has been indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel. In short, Iran -- even without nuclear weapons -- is fighting an active war against both the U.S. and Israel in the region.

So, how did Obama do at AIPAC? If you are a fan of more diplomacy, Obama did very well indeed. Obama began with a strong statement that sounded well, hawkish:

"The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race, and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat".

So far, so good. Unfortunately, what followed this was plenty of grist for the idealists in the audience. Obama's approach to this "grave" threat of Iran is -- you guessed it -- an "aggressive, principled diplomacy without self-defeating preconditions":

"We will open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies, and evaluate the potential for progress. (I am) willing to lead a tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing, if -- and only if -- it can advance the interests of the United States."

And what would Obama say to the "appropriate Iranian leader"? He'd apparently offer up (again) the same carrots that the Bush Administration and the Europeans have been dangling for the past four years: lifting of sanctions and political and economic integration with the international community.

Has Barack Obama been asleep for the past few decades? Yes, I know, sitting in the Reverend Wright's church for 20 years can certainly numb the mind. But this is an incredibly naive response and a testament to his inexperience. He just -- to coin a phrase -- "doesn't get it". The Iranian regime is a revolutionary government. By definition revolutionary regimes don't seek accommodation with the existing order, they seek its destruction. The mullahs in Iran seek not just the destruction of Israel but a return to the caliphate -- an Islamic social and political order that is 100% antithetical to the existing "international community". It is, thus, no surprise that the Iranians are not interested in all the myriad concessions that the Europeans and Condoleeza Rice have been offering. What they are seeking isn't negotiable.

Of course, Obama has his own non-negotiables, namely in leaving Iraq as quickly as possible -- even in the face of the obvious success of the surge, the recent declaration by CIA Director Hayden that we are approaching a "near strategic defeat" of Al Qaeda there, and the growing clout of the Maliki government. At AIPAC, Obama again called for the "responsible phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq", though he neglected to explain just how this would help Israel. Presumably, in Obama's view of the world, the retreat from Iraq would somehow signal the Iranians that we really "mean business" and represent a force to be reckoned with. Huh? As Mathew Continetti writes in the Weekly Standard, this policy would

"Erase the security and political gains the United States and its Iraqi allies have made in the last 18 months. It would lead to more violence, not less, and to a weaker Iraqi government, not a stronger one. It would breathe new life into the radicals -- many sponsored by the Iranian regime -- who seek a failed state in Iraq. And Tehran would quickly move to fill any power vacuum that the Americans left behind in Iraq."

Beyond the obvious fact that this would hurt America and help Iran, it would actually be devastating to Israel. I know that this position is not "en vogue" among American Jews, who lean heavily left, but the best thing that America could do to protect and support Israel is to win decisively in Iraq. The total defeat of Al Qaeda and of the radical Shiite forces there, the expulsion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the presence of a stable democracy in the heart of the Middle East -- are all part and parcel to Israel's security. In contrast, our retreat and ultimate defeat in Iraq -- and the attendant fall of the Iraqi government -- will lead to a devastating vacuum in the region that will further threaten Israel.

American Jews should understand clearly this: If you support Israel, you should be wary of a candidate pushing the tired line of diplomacy with a regime that doesn't negotiate. And you need to vote for victory in Iraq in November.

Who's best fiscally in the 5th?

It’s Republican primary time, when ambitions, conservative promises, and Reagan invocations are in full flower. And the only way to tell real conservative defenders from perennial conservative pretenders is to examine their records. Let’s start with the record of incumbent congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District. Mr. Lamborn is finishing his first term in Congress and in that time, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted against the Democrat agenda in Congress more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). This includes social, economic, and fiscal votes.

Mr. Lamborn was also one of five members of Congress – that’s five out of 535, and only three of the 435 members of the U.S. House – that the nation’s leading fiscal conservative group, Club for Growth, has given a rating of 100% for 2007. Club for Growth tracked votes on a range of tax, fiscal, and regulatory issues in the last Congress and determined that Mr. Lamborn voted correctly every time. See the entire 2007 Club for Growth scorecard here:

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/05/the_2007_congressional_scoreca.php

This is no new pattern. Over the twelve years he was a member of the Colorado legislature, Mr. Lamborn consistently led both the Colorado House and the Colorado Senate with his record of opposition to big-government spending, pork projects (these days fashionably referred to as “earmarks”), and tax increases.

With this kind of record, it is striking that Mr. Lamborn has a Republican primary opponent, Jeff Crank, attempting to criticize him on his fiscal record. It is well-known that, in justifying his own candidacy against a man who for a decade and a half has consistently defended all the things Mr. Crank claims to believe in, Mr. Crank has settled on one fundamental, earth-moving issue that gets the blood boiling of every principled Republican everywhere: franking expenditures.

That’s right, franking expenditures.

The franking privilege dates to the founding of the United States and covers expenses members of Congress incur in sending mail to their constituents. The purpose is obvious: communication between congresspeople and their constituents is a good thing. Clearly, this privilege like any legitimate privilege can be abused, so there are processes in place in Congress by which all franked mailings must be approved. Mr. Lamborn is a first-term congressman whose constituents need to get to know him and what he is doing on their behalf – again, this is not empty campaign-speak, but a rationale endorsed by the framers of American government – and all his mailings have been approved by congressional leadership. All such mail, moreover, is paid for out of a congressman’s official budget; what he does not spend on constituent communications he is fully authorized to spend on other things, and what he spends on constituent communications is not available for other things.

The use of this kind of issue against someone with the fiscal record of Mr. Lamborn says more about Mr. Crank than it does about the Congressman: from the standpoint of conservative policy, there simply is nothing more substantial on which Mr. Lamborn can be criticized.

Mr. Crank raised the franking issue most recently in a May 30 opinion column in the Colorado Springs Gazette, where he also offered glowing promises to, if elected, “rock the boat” of the Washington establishment, eliminate earmarks, eliminate the federal departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy, and cut federal spending by 20%.

Aside from the fact that even Ronald Reagan was not able to accomplish such heroic feats, if Mr. Crank were sincere in these convictions, he would be supporting Mr. Lamborn for Congress rather than running against him.

No Republican in the last two years, and very few Republicans in Colorado in the last half century, have more consistently, philosophically, and courageously opposed Washington (and Denver) excesses than has Doug Lamborn. It is the lack of people in Washington like Mr. Lamborn, and the interest of too many self-proclaimed conservatives in running against them, that is at the heart of the very Washington excess Mr. Crank now decries. It is also at the heart of the national Republican malaise that is quickly heading the GOP toward an electoral cataclysm in November.

Mr. Crank waxes poetic against earmarks. Again, if this conviction were superior to his personal ambition, Mr. Crank would be supporting Mr. Lamborn. Here are all Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests for fiscal year 2009, a list the Lamborn office has made public. All directly relate to defense spending, a core purpose of government, all Mr. Lamborn has offset in the budget by equivalent cuts in other programs so that there is no net increase in the federal budget, and all ironically recall Mr. Crank’s criticism of Mr. Lamborn during the 2006 campaign for allegedly not being as strong as Mr. Crank on defense:

Land Acquisition for Peterson Air Force Base Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center ACES 5 Ejection Seat Expeditionary Alternative Power Generator Radiation-Hardened Memory Technology Digital Engine Technology Military Information Management Software Space and Electronic Warfare Analysis Tools High Altitude, Long Endurance Communications and Surveillance System Improved Ground Access to Peterson AFB Improvements to Ft. Carson Gates 5 & 6

With requests like these, and with Mr. Lamborn now occupying a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, it is no wonder the defense criticisms have given way in Mr. Crank’s rhetoric to complaints about franking. As with his fiscal record, Mr. Lamborn’s history at the state level on issues of national security and defense was as impeccable as his federal record has now become.

As a side note, if Mr. Crank should criticize Mr. Lamborn for the above funding requests and call them “earmarks” as if they were pet pork projects, Mr. Crank should explain why as a lobbyist on behalf of a defense company in 2005 he requested, according to public lobbying records, “increased spending for the HH-6OL program” in defense authorization bills. The name of Mr. Crank’s lobbying company was Rocky Mountain Government Relations, and the HH-6OL is the Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter now in use in the Army and National Guard. Earmark, or legitimate modernization of the armed forces that defend us and that are such central issues in the Fifth Congressional District?

In addition to franking, Mr. Crank can regularly be heard calling for better “leadership” in Washington, presumably implying that Mr. Lamborn’s leadership is somehow defective. For starters, here is a short summary of Mr. Lamborn’s legislative resume, a kind of resume of which Mr. Crank has not the beginning: Colorado House of Representatives, 1995; House Republican Whip, 1997; Colorado Senate, 1998; Senate President Pro-Tem, 1999; U.S. Congress, 2006; U.S. House Armed Services Committee, 2007. Mr. Lamborn is also a member of two other U.S. House committees.

Moreover, here is a quotation from a letter written to Mr. Lamborn last week by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Crank’s former employer, concerning Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests. The letter is dated May 28, 2008 and is signed by the Chamber’s CEO.

“Your policy of only making requests that promote our nation’s defense, as well as providing full disclosure on these projects reflects not only their legitimacy, but also their important role in improving our nation’s defenses…It is with great pleasure that we offer our support, on behalf of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, for not only the appropriations you’ve requested, but also the manner in which you have done so. In a time where real transparency is lacking in Washington, your actions provide a refreshing change of pace.”

Sound suspiciously like leadership?

It should be noted clearly what many noted during the 2006 primary contest between Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Crank. Nobody doubts that Mr. Crank maintains a coherent conservative philosophy of government and a genuine desire to serve his country. Given Mr. Lamborn’s stellar record at both the state and federal levels, what is in doubt is Mr. Crank’s ability to subordinate his ambition to his desire to see the things he believes implemented in government. There simply is no improvement he could possibly make to the record of Mr. Lamborn, and plenty of ways he would not likely match Mr. Lamborn; indeed, at least according to the Club for Growth, there are only a handful even among current members of Congress who are in Mr. Lamborn’s league.

There is only one wise route for Fifth Congressional District Republicans on the ground to follow this August: ignore empty criticisms and empty promises, and say a prayer of thanks that in this age of messianic Democrats and the empty-headed crowds who love them, Colorado and Colorado Springs have a congressman with the kind of real wisdom, real mettle, and real leadership that will far outlast the latest political fad and the latest self-promoting Republican challenger.

We need more Lamborns & Schaffers

The GOP picture in Colorado’s 5th congressional district is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster. Editor: So warns Dave Crater, Air Force veteran, CU law student, and founder of the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship. Here's the article developing his logic for that somber verdict:

Loser GOP is Short on Doug Lamborns

“ ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…’ Just what does that mean? Not simply that they introduced something onto this continent. If so, where was it before they brought it in? And how could it be called a new nation if merely transferred? No, ‘bring forth’ cannot mean anything like ‘introduce from abroad.’ Lincoln is talking about generation on the spot. The nation is rightly called new because it is brought forth maieutically, by midwifery; it is not only new, but newborn. The suggested image is, throughout, of a hieros gamos, a marriage of male heaven (‘our fathers’) and female earth (‘this continent’). And it is a miraculous conception, a virgin birth. The nation is conceived by a mental act, in the spirit of liberty, and dedicated (as Jesus was in the temple) to a proposition. The proposition to which it is dedicated forms the bridge back from Lincoln to Jefferson, from the Address to the Declaration…” -- Garry Wills, Inventing America (Doubleday, 1978)

This is unfashionable language. So earthy; so full of male, female, procreation, and midwifery; all a very messy and laborious and old-fashioned business.

It is not even fashionable among many who believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the hieros gamos that produced it. A growing number of such, at least among educated elites, get nervous any time biblical language is used to describe the American founding or the continuing presence and spiritual power of American influence in the world. “Politicizing the gospel,” the accusation goes, or as the misguided authors of the recently published Evangelical Manifesto put it (www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com), the gospel should not be “confused with or reduced to political categories such as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal.’”

Translation: we want Christian engagement with culture and politics, but we are tired of evangelicals being so widely identified as political conservatives. This compromises the gospel. We want civility. We want political choices to be more separate from theological choices so that more political liberals feel more comfortable being around us. We want a definition of “Evangelical,” which should be spelled with a capital “E” like every other religious option is, that is politically bigger-tent. We want to be more inclusive. We are tired of controversy.

Nice stuff, not unlike the “reach across the aisle” language and strategy on which GOP presidential candidate John McCain has built a lucrative national career. Who doesn’t want unity? Who doesn’t want the two sides of the aisle to come together once and for all? Who doesn’t want to be credited with having helped make the group hug happen? Why trouble ourselves with the laborious midwifery of an unfashionably conservative political heritage when an easier, more comfortable route is, at this hour as at every hour, so readily crafted and so ripe for the taking?

If Christ had followed this sure-winner public relations strategy, he might not have gotten himself crucified.

I’m not the only one with a better idea. GOP candidate for U.S. Senate and all-around Republican good guy Bob Schaffer captured it nicely on Saturday in the best applause line of a highlight-laden speech to the Colorado GOP state assembly: “Now, if we’re going to compete successfully against Democrats, we need to have a little bit of introspection and look at our own party as well. We could sustain a little bit of reform within the Republican Party, too. I’ve always believed that principles matter most, and I believe that it’s important even to take on leaders in our own party who have a tendency to drift from those principles that have defined our country.”

Ouch. The normal Schaffer grace, but a shot between the eyes to Republican leaders, all the way up to President Bush, whom Schaffer went on to tell the delegates he had publicly opposed on legislative disasters like No Child Left Behind and McCain-Feingold, which (my comment here, not Schaffer’s) is now hurting McCain’s campaign as badly as it is hurting free speech across the fruited plain. Note this is not any vague Scott McClellan sellout to the left; it is principled criticism from the right.

Schaffer’s simple truth was red meat for a leadership-starved Republican grassroots. Other ringers from Schaffer included a more-sincere-than-usual-from-Republicans-these-days appeal to the “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” of the Declaration – which went nicely with Mrs. Schaffer and the five Schaffer children, three of whom are training to become military officers, standing next to him – as well as a refreshing acknowledgement of the Almighty as the source of all good political things. It was a reference, given it is a piece of political theology almost always heard from conservatives and not liberals and which is the foundation of conservative political philosophy, that might have been a bit too flag-wavey to keep the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto smiling.

Watch Schaffer’s entire speech here.

But this is prologue. I imagine Schaffer would agree that good speeches are nice in their place and discomfitingly rare in today’s soul-starved GOP, but the energy and heart of the Grand Old Party and the larger American conservative movement are forged and proved on the ground, when and where nobody’s watching and applauding, and when the principles we claim to espouse are given flesh and blood by backbone in the trenches. The real question is not whether we can find someone with the combination of guts and talent to give the speech Schaffer gave. The question is whether and where we can find a few more with the spinal stiffness to argue and vote to implement these sentiments in public policy, to do so even when nobody’s applauding and flattering, and to offer no weak, self-doubting apologies or excuses in the process.

Tough stuff. Not nearly as nice as big-tent John McCain Evangelical Manifesto inclusiveness. But as one of the nation’s – indeed, the world’s – favorite evangelical preachers, one who didn’t sign the Evangelical Manifesto and probably wasn’t invited to, is fond of saying, “Hard preaching makes soft people.” Converse: soft preaching may make for good media, but it makes for exceedingly hard hearts. Both may win you an election and get you out of short-term controversy; both will, whether you are an individual or a political party, eventually cost you your soul and your long-term political influence.

Fortunately for restless Colorado conservatives everywhere who don’t just say they agree with Schaffer that principles matter most, but so believe in their heart of soft hearts, Schaffer is not alone in holding high and proud the banner of principled political conservatism. Amidst the back-stabbing, ambition-soaked, slander-drenched, platitude-heavy, hard-hearted Republican atmosphere in El Paso County is an honest and sincere man with real convictions who happens to be a U.S. Congressman.

Name, Douglas L. Lamborn. Born 1954, Leavenworth, Kansas. Schaffer-like, has both a wife and five children. Bachelor’s in Journalism, National Merit Scholar, Juris Doctor, University of Kansas. Colorado House of Representatives, 1995. House Republican Whip, 1997. Colorado Senate, 1998. President Pro-tem, 1999. Impeccable conservative voting record at the state level. U.S. Congress, 2006. House Armed Services Committee, 2007.

According to Congressional Quarterly, through the August 2007 recess, Mr. Lamborn actually did what every Republican candidate for office tells party regulars he/she will do if elected: he voted against the Democratic agenda in the U.S. House more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). One of five members of Congress – that’s 5 out of 535 – to receive a 100% rating in 2008 from the Club for Growth, perhaps the nation’s leading free-market think tank and political advocacy group. “True Blue” rating from the Family Research Council for a 100% voting record on issues of social conservatism. That means a) men get to be completely and joyously satisfied with women as their only marital option, b) women not only get acknowledged as fully equal to this high calling but enjoy the same reciprocal satisfaction in their marital options, and c) cute babies get to be safe in the womb again.

In short, here’s a politico with soul and a soft heart. For his labors, he has two GOP primary challengers, both claiming to believe in all the same things Mr. Lamborn has now spent a decade and a half advancing in public policy via the messy and laborious midwifery always required so to advance. Their reasons for running? Lamborn spends too much money communicating by mail with his constituents. We therefore need to elect his opponents to “show real leadership” and “take our Colorado common sense values to Washington” and “reach across the aisle to get things done” and .

Other vague condemnations and abandonments of Lamborn, both explicit and surreptitious, have been common and ugly throughout the Fifth Congressional and Colorado GOP hierarchies. Lamborn’s resulting distrust of the local GOP structure led him to petition on to the August primary ballot instead of going through the normal caucus process.

Bob Schaffer experienced something of the same royal treatment in 2004, when he ran for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate against moderate beer magnate Pete Coors and was opposed by many of the courageous state Republican leaders who, with no alternative candidate and thus no reason this time to have the proverbial finger in the proverbial wind, are now supporting him.

Yet somehow, even according to Mr. Lamborn’s opponent, Lamborn leads his competitors by at least ten percentage points in current polling. Read more here. Perhaps the grassroots is not as unhappy with Lamborn-style, Schaffer-style principled political conservatism as media pundits and GOP leaders and self-serving challengers would have us believe.

The GOP picture in Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster: persecute and marginalize family-man conservative heroes and celebrate cocktail-party mediocrities. Downplay decades of proven commitment and up-play glowing promises and smooth talk. Talk at campaign stops about what a great conservative and loyal Republican and fan of Ronald Reagan you are; talk on the phone about how useless Doug Lamborns are and how we’ll never be a winner party again until we are rid of them.

The nation was born maieutically, by midwifery, by men like Bob Schaffer and Doug Lamborn. Men like their critics may have won a few short-term victories in government, but their brief time passed and they ended their average lives as outsiders. The Grand Old Party was similarly born in the crucible of antebellum anti-slavery politics, where Abe Lincoln got scalded just as viscerally and irrationally and faithlessly as genuine Lincoln-style conservatives are getting scalded in today’s version of the party Lincoln founded.

Let us not dissemble: the GOP, both nationally and in Colorado, is far enough along its leftward path that only a stark electoral drubbing will awaken the collective party senses and once again create the political and cultural atmosphere where a new Reagan can rise to prominence and conservatives can re-take the party hierarchy, where a party and a nation once again remember the virgin birth – both the one in Bethlehem and the one in Philadelphia – and where both pledge anew, for the defense of a great set of eternal propositions about God, man, and government, not only their words during election season, but their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Me generation in 5th CD

Republicans lost Congress in 2006, and may lose more seats in 2008, largely because members forgot it's all about the principles, the party, and the country, and acted as if it was "all about me." Unless I'm missing something, that's also the reason two primary challengers are hounding Congressman Doug Lamborn in Colorado's 5th congressional district this summer. As a freshman, Lamborn has compiled one of the most stellar conservative records in the US House or Senate, bar none. Club for Growth ranked him in their top 5 out of 535 members in the two bodies. National Journal rates him No. 1 among all House Republicans in consistently voting against Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.

He co-founded the House Caucus on Missile Defense and battled his way onto the diminished GOP side of the Armed Services Committee.

His endorsements for reelection, in addition to the Club for Growth, include National Federation of Independent Business, National Pro-Life Alliance, National Right to Work, Concerned Women for America, Republican National Coalition for Life, and the Minutemen Civil Defense PAC.

Other than that, he has done nothing, earned no one's admiration and support, and put up a big zero for the conservative cause, the state of Colorado, and the people of his Colorado Springs-centered district.

It's hard, therefore, to discern any motivation for the greater good or causes beyond themselves that would be driving ex-Hefley staffer Jeff Crank and retired Gen. Bentley Rayburn to force a rematch with Lamborn after losing to him two years ago.

These are two likable, accomplished, and capable men as best one can tell, but (news flash) we already have a solid Republican congressman in the 5th. So the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate objective reasons why either should displace the honored and honorable incumbent of their own party.

Absent some such reason -- and I've seen none -- the only remaining explanation is such nakedly selfish assertions as "I belong in Congress" or "He's not half the man I am" or "This is my destiny." Gag.

This is the kind of "me generation" thinking that eventually produced rank overspending, gross expediency, incumbency mania, scandal, and in some cases even prison terms for the GOP idealists of 1994 as things spiralled downward toward the voters' repudiation in 2006. Why dump a proven conservative whose record shows he is not susceptible to any of those things, and put another "all about me" contender in his place?

The sensible decision for Republican primary voters, come August, is to keep Rep. Lamborn right where he is, and encourage Mssrs. Crank and Rayburn to find other outlets for the public service which they unconvincingly claim is their only motive.