The Hill News

Normally, I wouldn’t respond to an ill-informed, mistake-ridden, whiny and unprofessional attack on my employer and boss, the Club for Growth and its president, Chris Chocola, by a former staffer for House Speaker Denny Hastert. You may remember Hastert: He was Speaker when the Republicans lost a record number of seats in the 2006 elections because the Republican Party was no longer viewed as the party of fiscal responsibility. But I digress. The fact is, John Feehery’s column offers an opportunity for a teachable moment.
 
During the years that Speaker Hastert and his communications director, Mr. Feehery, led House Republicans, the party leadership always played not to lose. They spent no political capital doing what they were sent to Washington to do, which was cut spending and reduce the size of government. Earmarks and pork projects ran rampant. The “Bridge to Nowhere” became a national joke. They voted for massive expansions in entitlement ! programs and were scared away by entitlement reforms that are now widely embraced by the party.  In the Hastert era, we got terrible policy, the size of government exploded, and the Republicans lost dozens of seats in Congress.

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