{"id":11013,"date":"2007-06-04T16:00:43","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T20:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11013.html"},"modified":"2007-06-04T16:00:43","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T20:00:43","slug":"armey-marches-to-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/armey-marches-to-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Armey marches to Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet the new contributor to Time magazine’s Swampland blog: former House Majority Leader Dick Armey<\/a> (R-Texas).<\/p>\n

As I settle in as a guest blogger here at Swampland, I’d like to thank Time and its readers for inviting me to share my views. I hope I can raise the debate about the direction in which the conservative movement and the nation are heading. I welcome questions and comments.<\/p>\n

For those who read this column, you probably most know me as a an [sic<\/i>] architect of the Contract with America, House Majority Leader from 1994-2003, and more recently as Chairman grassroots powerhouse FreedomWorks. <\/p>\n

In all of these endeavors I have been guided by my highest political value: freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It only took Armey a few paragraphs before he launched into a fairly predictable harangue: “On the Democratic side, we see an abundance demagoguery and proposals for the largest expansion of government since the 1930’s and 1970’s, with socialized health care and severe regulation of the economy, especially the energy sector. Great for sound bites, but a complete disregard for fundamental economic principles.”<\/p>\n

As TP noted<\/a>, this is the same Armey who recently included Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Endangered Species Act, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on a list of the “Ten Most Harmful Government Programs,” and once famously referred to Rep. Barney Frank as “Barney Fag.”<\/p>\n

The guy, in other words, is a class act. Just the type of person Time wants to be associated with?<\/p>\n

Having said all of this, I really hate to mention it, but the “to be fair” part of me can’t help but point out a few points for the other side.
\n
\nArmey, for all of his many, many faults, has been politically provocative lately, in unexpected ways. In November, when the GOP Smear Machine was going after John Kerry with a vengeance for his botched joke, Armey defended Kerry<\/a>, telling Chris Matthew on Hardball, “Well, of course, this is a perfect example of politics in America … The President wants the people to perceive [Kerry] of having maligned our troops…. I think John Kerry’s right. He’s making a defense of himself. He’s saying, ‘Look, I was not maligning the troops, I was maligning the President of the United States.'”<\/p>\n

In January, Armey told<\/a> Texas Monthly:<\/p>\n

“[Tom DeLay’s backers] were people like James Dobson, who were in business for themselves. They never understood that this isn’t about them. It’s about the service we perform for this nation, how we honor the great traditions of this nation, how we engage in public policy that’s consistent with the foundation principles of this nation. For example, I would argue that James Dobson is an example of somebody who never understood what they meant by separation of church and state.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the same interview, he said, referring to the Terri Schiavo fiasco, “To any true lover of liberty, to anybody who believes in the separation of church and state, the Schiavo case should be a place where you sit there saying, ‘Alarm! Alarm!'”<\/p>\n

Then, in February, Armey gave a surprising interview<\/a> with McClatchy, in which he bashed Tom DeLay (“I don’t believe he’s a good person”) and he lamented the 2002 Iraq war resolution (“Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively”).<\/p>\n

Given all of this, Armey is not exactly a doctrinaire, rubber-stamp, Fox-News GOP water-carrier. He’s said some provocative things lately, which necessarily makes him at least a little interesting.<\/p>\n

Still, when Time brings in someone on the left to counter-balance Armey, I’ll be far more impressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet the new contributor to Time magazine’s Swampland blog: former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). As I settle in as a guest blogger here at Swampland, I’d like to thank Time and its readers for inviting me to share my views. I hope I can raise the debate about the direction in which the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}