Club For Growth Endorses Shadegg

The results of a poll commissioned by the Club For Growth indicate that the GOP may face serious challenges at the voting booth this year if the new House Majority Leader is part of the existing senior Republican leadership.

"Voters in the GOP-held districts where the battle for the majority in the House of Representatives will be most hard-fought want Republicans to make a clean break from the past by choosing as Majority Leader someone new and without extensive ties to lobbyists," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "As the only candidate in the race who isn’t associated with the current senior leadership or the Washington lobbying community, John Shadegg offers Members a choice that can help improve the image of the GOP with voters as we go into a tough election cycle."

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"Voters are watching what’s going on in Washington and they don’t like what they see," continued Toomey. "More voters associate the Republican leadership in Congress with corruption and dishonesty than with any other issue or action other than the war and an amazing eighty percent think ethical misconduct in Congress is either serious or scandalous."

The selection of Shadegg as new majority leader will be a good start, and in the short term will at least signify that the GOP is aware of the discontent on the right as it relates to the Abramoff scandal. But as Mark Tapscott pointed out the other day, earmarks that appeal to the clients of Washington lobbyists are chump change compared to nanny-state programs like Medicare and Social Security.

If we're to fight government corruption in the long term, Americans need to realize that the government's penchant for meddling in our everyday affairs is the cause of such extensive lobbying campaigns in the first place.