Mike Pence for Minority Leader

Today, I participated in a blogger conference call with Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who is angling for the role of House Minority Leader in this Friday's leadership elections.

Pence compared the upcoming contest to that of a senior class president election, a race he was quick to note he won.  I'd found the comparison a little overly folksy when I read it this morning in a Fort Wayne Journal Gazette editorial, but hearing Pence elaborate on it, the value of the insight seems to trump the folksiness.

Rather than a typical electoral challenge involving hundreds of thousands of voters, this decision comes down to the voices of a couple hundred colleagues, involving circles and cliques - what Pence described as a rightfully closely-held process.  Given his overt blog outreach (which began not today, but the very day after the election), "closely-held" doesn't seem to suggest "behind closed doors" to Pence.  His reasoning was simply that the elected members of the Republican conference are best-suited to identify their leaders and that his campaign (while making notable outward overtures) is about coalescing support from among those Congressional cliques.

As for policy, a Minority Leader Pence would represent a shift away from fiscal permissiveness, big government, spending secrecy, and mealy-mouthed border security.  While he acknowledges his hands aren't sterile in terms of past earmark requests or his vote on the Farm Bill, his commitment to earmark reform, his concern for debt and spending levels, and his obvious desire to return the small government ideals of Reagan and Gingrich posture him well as the healthy alternative to the bloated, wasteful approach to governance increasingly on display at the median of the Republican delegation.

Setting the proper tone at the top is vital for any new leader and from a policy and credibility standpoint, Pence is highly qualified to do so.  With many wayward legislators on his own side of the aisle, however, a truly effective leader will be one who manages to restore what Pence referred to as the "foundation of public confidence in Republican governance" which has eroded in large part thanks to many GOP legislators departing from the Spirit of '94.

A successful new leader will therefore be one who not only walks the small government walk, but who has the leadership skills to inspire his colleagues to do likewise.  As Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Pence may be  singularly well-suited to do just that.  As Minority Leader, he would bring with him a ready-made constituency of more than 100 Republican lawmakers, belonging to a caucus whose commitment to restoring these principles is unmatched.

As for cross-aisle relations, Pence vowed to challenge Nancy Pelosi's big government agenda at every turn.  More than once he referred to a spirit of "cheerfully pugilistic opposition" to bad decision-making, in what he expects to be a "target-rich environment".

It's hard (for me anyway) to read the collective temperature from within the cliquey couple hundred voters in this race, but Pence has gained a lot of support in both traditional and new media, a combined result of his outreach and his rightfully broad appeal.

The collective course of Congressional Republicans is one that should not be stayed.  That said, change simply for sake of change can be pointless or even harmful.  Still, while last week's Democratic victories owed to more than Republicans losing the tune, installing Mike Pence as the new maestro of the minority would address the right problems.  If House Republicans rediscover the merits of limited government, spending transparency, accountability, and fiscal discipline, we're in for the twin benefits of improved legislative decision making and improved electoral prospects.