McCain burnishes anti-spending rep

From the ever-informative Novak:

[A McCain-Coburn move to throw sand in the gears of some more Senate pork-barrel spending--need to be clearer about my antecedents.--ed] would place responsibility for spending excesses on the new Democratic majority taking office next year. It is highly unlikely that Sen. Robert Byrd, a legendary king of pork returning as Appropriations Committee chairman, will reverse the habits of a lifetime and listen to ordinary voters' revulsion over excessive federal spending. "Voters want the earmark favor factory shut down, not turned over to new management," said Coburn.

John McCain, master of perception extraordinaire. I wonder if any of it will be real.

As a side note, porker extraordinaire and Bob Byrd's chronic rival for top spender in the Senate, Ted Stevens, is running for re-election again. He's 84 years old. He has been the Senate's chief executioner of free-market policy (spending restraint) for the past six years.

A good task for the Club for Growth: knocking Stevens off in the primary. (No, that was not a joke.) In Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, the Club for Growth was pretty much solely responsible for electing two powerful, principled and effective voices for spending restraint, instead of pork-barrel establishmentarians. They should aim for a bigger scalp this time--by turning Ted Stevens's corrupt carcass into an irrelevant carcass. Anyone know Alaska's primary rules?

Both red and blue grassroots interest groups interested in maintaining their brand equity (trust of the grassroots) should make coalitions to eliminate incumbent Representatives in primaries where the general elections are so alledgedly locked-up. DC must be reformed, as many appropriator's carcasses as possible at a time. That means toppling Representatives who have shot down lobbyist reform, earmark reform...things that left and right can agree need to be changed.