Introducing Tim Bridgewater
Friday, May 14th, 2010Until this morning, I’ve been watching the Utah Senate race from an arm’s-length distance. After reading Tim Bridgewater’s Washington Post op-ed, I’m ‘coming off the sidelines’. From this day forward, I’ll try to keep closer track of this seat. What Mr. Bridgegwater’s op-ed tells me is that he’s a great conservative. Here’s what I’m basing my opinion on:
Much has been made of the Tea Party movement and its impact in Utah. The original Tea Party, in 1773, was a rejection of a government too far away, too detached and insufficiently attuned to what was happening in this country. It led directly to the formation of “committees of correspondence” in the 13 colonies.
In 1787, the Founding Fathers crafted a free system of government built on the principle that individuals have God-given rights. The Founders protected those rights with the horizontal separation of powers among the three branches of government and, most important, by a vertical separation of powers between the federal government and the states. The national government would manage external affairs and keep the states on a level playing field; state governments were to do the rest.
Over time, that vertical separation of powers has almost disappeared. Today, the federal government feels it can manage even the details of personal health care and education. States have been relegated to administrative units of a central leviathan, in a system of plunder in which each state tries to live at the expense of the others.
In such a system, experience in Washington is valuable. But Utah Republicans rejected that model of governance and so rejected the Washington veteran. The delegates seek a return to the earlier system, with Washington supreme in its limited fields (as enumerated in the Constitution) and the states responsible for the rest. I believe that not just in Utah but across the country, primary and general election voters will prefer the older model.
God bless all federalist-thinking candidates. Let’s hope that there’s a huge influx of them into Congress in time for the 2011 session. (more…)