Senator Jim DeMint Gets it Right

This morning I caught most of Mike Church’s interview of Senator Jim DeMint. God bless that man. He’s taking a lot of heat for his comments about Arlen Specter’s tiny little leap across the aisle to the Democrat Party.

I googled “Jim DeMint Arlen Specter” and found numerous blog posts and articles making fun of him for saying “We’re seeing across the country right now that the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom.” That’s what it’s boiled down to today: if you talk about freedom you become the butt of a joke.

Having a friendly host in Mike Church, Senator DeMint was able to expand on his thoughts and while I listened I thought: “He gets it. Jim DeMint gets it.” I only wish I could vote for the man.

Senator DeMint: Yeah. Well, government has gone crazy up here. The level of spending and debt is, I mean, is far beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. And I think we need to stand up and take our country back and take our government back. I’m convinced the American people believe that. I mean, I’ve seen enough surveys to show me that people of all stripes are concerned about spending debt and the resulting taxes and inflation that’s going to happen. I mean, I think they’re ready to stand with us. So I’m not talking about a Republican Party that’s very limited. In fact, if we really stick to principles of letting people make their own choices and states having a lot more flexibility in how they deal with education and healthcare, then our principles are going to work for New York and California and South Carolina. But when we have a one-size-fits-all federal solution for everyone, then everyone’s competing to see who can impose their views on someone else. And that’s not what the Republican Party is about. It’s not what the Constitution is about. So I think we just have to, as Republicans, realize Arlen Specter didn’t care anything about our party or our principles.

Mike: Right.

Senator DeMint: When he found out he couldn’t win the primary against Pat Toomey, he said, well, the party’s no good to me anymore; I’m leaving, because it’s self-preservation. I think that’s what America hates about politics is people who just are just serving themselves. So the Republican Party needs to mean more than that. And it needs to mean primarily freedom, free markets, free people, and folks making their own decisions. And I think that will attract a large majority of American people.

If you don’t have Sirius Satellite Radio or you missed the show you should read the whole transcript. Mike Church calls himself an amateur historian, but in my opinion he knows more about history than most of the folks teaching our children. They talked about the Founding Fathers and the Federalist Papers, but my absolute favorite quote from DeMint was this one:

Senator DeMint: And I think a lot depends on really what our leadership does and the positions it takes. But frankly, I mean, I’ve isolated myself, taken some pretty tough stands against the party in some cases and saying things like it’s not numbers, it’s principles that really matter because once we have the principles we’ll get the numbers.

Principles! No wonder he’s taking hits from both sides. He’s more concerned with principles than he is with the numbers. If more Republicans thought that way they wouldn’t have to worry about the numbers, the numbers would take care of themselves!