On the Mike Gallagher show, I heard a debate about endorsing candidates for office. The office in question is the 23^rd district in New York. There is a candidate that went through the nominating process for the party and has the Republican Party endorsement. She is very liberal on most issues. There is also a Conservative Party candidate that has values closer to those of most conservatives around the country. The debate is which should we get behind, the one that got the party nomination and is liberal or the conservative candidate who did not place high in the party nominating process.

Newt Gingrich has endorsed the Republican candidate for the office. He is catching a lot of flak for endorsing her because of her liberal views. His take on the issue is that you sometimes have to accept candidates that are not 100% with you on all the issues. He cited some examples when he was running for Speaker of the House and after he obtained Speaker. Lee Habib, the Mike Gallagher show political expert, seconded the endorsement by Newt. He cited the example of the Democrats recruiting conservative Democrats to run in Republican districts and winning.

Callers to the show were not necessarily so forgiving. Most were tired of having liberal RINO Republicans voting with the Democrats to destroy important legislation or pass Democrat legislation that is equally destructive. Their point is that it is better to have reliable conservative votes than having unreliable RINO votes.

My position is somewhere close to Newt’s position. It is most important to win and be in a position to direct the affairs of the House and Senate. Second is passing or defeating certain legislation. That said, it is also important that people in your party have certain “core values” that are important legislatively. That does not mean that the candidate has to have all Republican “core values”, just those that will enable the important legislation to get through.

Then we have to decide what are the most important “core values” that a candidate would have to have in order to get an endorsement. In my humble opinion, the candidate would have to be a fiscal conservative. That is that the person would only spend federal money when it was absolutely necessary to spend federal money. The person would necessarily need to desire to follow the Constitution. Now, I would not necessarily expect that the candidate have exactly the same view of what is Constitutional. But, a desire to follow the Constitution would solve most questions on whether to fund a particular federal program. That would be about all that I would require the candidate to have as “core values”.

Some of you are going to ask about social issues. Social issues are important to me. I am as pro-life as anyone in the country, but I also am realistic when it comes to politics. If we require all Republican candidates be strictly pro-life, we would deprive ourselves of some good legislative candidates. Notice I said legislative candidates, not Presidential candidates. A Presidential candidate would need to be pro-life to get my endorsement because the President directly impacts life issues. Legislatures only indirectly deal with life issues, so a pro-choice candidate is not necessarily a liability. But a candidate that is not with you on financial issues can destroy your legislative agenda very fast. That is why financial issues are the hard and fast “core values” that I require in a candidate.

If there are two equally good candidates and one only meets the financial values and the other adds the social values, of course I would endorse the candidate with the social values.

In the case being discussed in the 23^rd district of New York, you have two candidates to choose from. One has been selected by the Republican Party and the other by the Conservative Party. From what I know of New York politics, it is impossible for a Republican to win without the endorsement of the Conservative Party. The reverse would also be true. When you look at how the person would vote, both would follow the Republican line most of the time (using a generic Republican, not this liberal one). So in essence, the Republican Party is running two candidates in this election. Since that is the case, I would endorse the candidate that is closest to my position. That would be the Conservative Party candidate, not the Republican Party candidate. My reasoning is that the Conservative Party candidate would vote with my position almost all the time. The Republican Party candidate would vote with the Democrats more than the Republicans. That is not a Republican candidate that is worth endorsing in my opinion.

I am not saying that Newt Gingrich is wrong. He looked at the party label after the name and made his selection on that basis. He did that because he is a Republican first and a conservative second. I, on the other hand, am a conservative first and a Republican second. That is the main difference between us.