A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Readers familiar with the travails of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives know that since the resignation of Tom DeLay as Majority Leader, the House Republican Caucus appears to have lost much of its sense of direction. This is evident in votes lost and votes where the Republican leadership pulled back instead of fighting for a floor win.

Much of the blame for this lack of direction has been laid at the feet of Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt--who may be handicapped by the fact that he was pretty much pressed into duty after the DeLay resignation and that the word "Acting" is in front of his title. In either event, many a soul believes that Blunt is not and should not be long for the leadership and that Republicans need a new captain at the helm.

Which brings us to Mike Pence: 

If the Republican majority in the Senate and House can somehow stave off a newly energized Democratic assault in the mid-term elections next November and preserve their governing status, they may well have Indiana congressman Mike Pence to thank.

It has been Pence and his roughly 100 colleagues in the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) who have almost single-handedly stopped the chronic GOP overspending of the past five years and forced the first full-fledged budget-cutting bill since 1997. In doing so, Pence and his dedicated band of principled House members have begun to force the GOP back to the first principles of lower taxes, limited government, a strong defense, and a fierce dedication to moral authority—including preserving the rights of the unborn.

For these reasons Pence has been chosen as the HUMAN EVENTS Man of the Year. As legislation is slowly rolling through Congress to restrain spending and extend vital pro-growth tax cuts, Pence and his pals have changed the thinking of their own House leadership as well as the President himself.

Recent polls suggest that this Republican rejuvenation is already posting dividends. Of course, the new budget is itself just a bare-bones beginning, but you have to start somewhere. Big-government conservatism has up to now ruled the roost during the Bush years in Washington, but Pence and his friends refuse to accept the notion that big government—or the siren song of central planning—will ever work any better under Republicans than it did under Democrats, whose policy past is littered with failure after failure.

Pence regards himself as “an unregenerate supply-sider” who believes in pro-growth and free-market economics. “Ronald Reagan got me into politics,” says Pence. “He was my role model.” That’s a good start. But Pence also counts economists Joseph Schumpeter, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Adam Smith among his tutors. His central aim is to marry supply-side tax reforms with strict spending restraint in order to expand the economy and get the budget into balance. That may put Pence and his comrades in the Washington minority these days, but the momentum just may be shifting their way.

Pence is a third-term congressman from Indiana’s 6th District, in the middle of the state. He ran twice unsuccessfully and then became a popular radio talk-show host, finally winning his seat in 2000. Like his friend and RSC colleague Jeff Flake from Arizona, Pence ran a regional policy think tank–in his case the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, while for Flake it was the Goldwater Institute. Like so many of the RSC members – people such as Jeb Hensarling, John Shadegg, Marsha Blackburn, and many others–successful political style is inseparable from policy content. That’s always a good combination for revolutionaries.

Whatever one thinks about the "Republican rejuvenation," the need for said rejuvenation and the policies underlying it, it is clear that Pence is a mover and a shaker in the best sense of the word. People may agree or disagree with him, but they are bound to take him seriously as a man of ideas and as a public figure with a serious interest in the issues. Of course, this interest comes with his responsibilities as the head of the RSC and of course, pragmatism will oftentimes have to triumph over ideological purity should Pence ascend to further heights in the House Republican leadership.

Still, it could fairly be said that Republicans could do worse in any upcoming leadership race than to turn to Pence. It is up to him to decide whether or not he wants in but if he does, he deserves every consideration. And in the event you are interested--and I know you are--another profile of Pence can be found here.

(Cross posted on RedState.)