In California’s 4th Congressional district, Democrat Charlie Brown conceded a loss by about 1,300 votes to Tom McClintock. I’ve always like McClintock for his tough-as-steel stance against increasing government spending and fiscal responsibility. (The anti-abortion stuff, not so much, but that’s not what McClintock has made his mark being about.) So I’m sorry he’s out of Sacramento but not at all sorry to see him go to Washington. Where he will be one of between 176 and 180 Republicans in the 435-seat House of Representatives, and therefore very much in the minority, but at least someone will be standing up for not spending ourselves into oblivion.
Seriously. We have a GDP for 2008 estimated to be $14.3 trillion. Our economy is 23% of the world’s economy. We have just spent, or committed ourselves to spend, $8.5 trillion of new money to rehabilitate the economy — thus devaluing our currency by a factor of 60%. And this isn’t aggressive enough government involvement for our President-Elect. Someone needs to stand athwart this insanity and scream “Stop!” Tom McClintock is just the guy to do it. He’ll be howling at the moon for a while, that’s for sure, but that’s no different than his gig in Sacramento has been.