I am a candidate for the United States Senate in 2010. California deserves strong, active, and conservative representation in Washington, D.C. By 2010, an entire generation of Californians will have been born and grown to voting age, never having known a principled conservative — to say nothing of a Republican — representing them in the United States Senate. In 2010, we will change that.

 

I am a candidate for the United States Senate because I love America and its founding principles.  My politics and my public career testify to my belief in those principles. 

 

• I believe our natural rights are inherent to our humanity, not a grant from government.

 

• I believe the role of government is limited to securing our rights from external danger and internal lawlessness. 

 

• I believe that when government exceeds this mandate, our liberty is at risk.  As George Washington said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquent; it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

 

• I believe that for too long now, our elected representatives have softly encouraged us to give up our independence to government.  Year after year, we see government’s responsibilities grow while our personal liberty shrinks. 

 

This terrible progression of state power at the expense of our natural liberties is not purely the fault of Democrats. There are plenty of Republicans who bear blame as well — as we have seen here in California, and in Washington, D.C., over the past decade.

 

But only the Republicans can turn the tide.

 

• Only the Republicans have the bedrock foundation of dedication to a proper Constitutional order.

 

• Only the Republicans have a record of fiscal responsibility.

 

• Only the Republicans have a sound commitment to national defense.

 

• Only the Republicans have an understanding of what business and entrepreneurs need to create jobs for working Californians.

 

• And only the Republicans have a conservative tradition that calls us back — however far we have strayed — however tattered our banner — to the principles that made California the greatest state in the Union.

 

I am proud to say that I have been true to those principles and that conservative tradition over my 22 years of public service.

 

It’s a long way from here to the general election in 24 months. We have a primary to win, and then a fight against Barbara Boxer and her far-left friends that will demand everything we’ve got.

 

I am confident we will win that fight. I am confident that when Californians have a real choice between me and Barbara Boxer — it will be an easy choice for them.

 

• You see, I want Californians to keep their hard-earned money.

 

• I want to lower fuel and energy costs by producing more of America’s oil, and building modern, safe and reliable nuclear power plants.

 

• I want to rein in runaway Federal spending.

 

• I want to bring a conservative leadership to Washington, D.C., that actually works.

 

And what does Barbara Boxer want?

 

• She wants more of the same from Washington, D.C.

 

• She wants to take more of your money for her own plans.

 

• She wants to forfeit your children’s future to enlarge an over $6 trillion national debt.

 

• She has no plan to make good on an unsustainable $86 trillion entitlements system that puts our children’s future at risk.

 

• She wants to keep fuel prices high, with no oil drilling, and no new nuclear power plants.

 

I will put my record against hers any day. And when we do, in November 2010 — I know the people of California will make the right decision.

 

California is my home, and I love it second only to my God and my family. Like so many, I came here as a child, when my family decided to earn their piece of the California dream. I worked my way through that dream, paying for my own college as a union carpenter, and serving in the United States Army. That dream has been good to us, and I am a candidate for the United States Senate because I want to restore it and defend it.

 

We have a long road ahead. But I know that with the grace of God, the courage of our convictions, and the blessings of the good people of California, our best days are yet to come.

 

Thank you, and may God bless our great state.

As someone who opposed the ill-starred bailout from start to finish, allow me to observe a few things.

First, the $700 billion of asset buying intervention from the Federal government means next to nothing in a world with capital flows in excess of trillions of dollars a day.  Why else would the U.S. markets be down another 6-8 percent as of this writing, with Asian markets down about 5 percent and European markets down 6-9 percent on the day? About $25 trillion of equity has been lost in stock markets around the world this year, with another $2 trillion in value evaporating today alone.  These values have swamped the action Congress took last week, as many economists knew they would.

Second, the bailout did nothing to address the fundamentals: mainly, that our capital gains tax rate is too high, that America’s corporate taxes are the second highest in the industrialized world, and that the mark-to-market accounting rule for certain assets needed to be changed earlier (the SEC just got the authority to suspend the rule last Friday).  Add to that the fact that this who financial crisis got legs because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were underwriting loans to unqualified buyers with the implicit guarantee of our tax money to back them up, causing a speculative housing bubble to get far larger than it would have under free market conditions.

Sadly, the ability of Republicans to explain this issue to the public has been compromised by the large numbers of our elected officials, from President Bush on down, who supported the bailout rather than focusing on fixing the root cause of our current travails.  Absent any clear alternative plan, we may be headed down the path of destructive government meddling in the market that economists today believe deepened and prolonged the economic difficulties that began in 1929 and lasted through the advent of WWII.