Bennett on the campaign trail

Recently, Senator Bob Bennett met with “community leaders” at a breakfast in Provo.  Hitting the campaign trail early and hard, he spent the morning sharing his views on why he should be sent back to Washington DC.

He said we have a very popular president, but the pendulum always swings back the other way.  He himself ran on a platform of change, but once he got there, he realized how slowly change actually happens. Obama is also finding that out now – he thought he could change everything in DC and but has now had to adopt the Bush policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Change happens very slowly.

Senator Bennett said we are in as serious a recession as we have ever seen – if we look back to the recession in the 1980′s and don’t remember how hard it was because Ronald Reagan helped pull us out of the mess left by Jimmy Carter.  He said “we need to take a much more serious look at where we are, which means we need to focus on for reducing entitlement spending” and said the 3 biggest entitlement programs are Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  He said “I voted against the stimulus bill, against the omnibus bill, against the budget and ‘all of that’”.

Right now, our federal budget is $2.2 trillion and mandatory spending is $2.2 trillion, meaning every dime is already committed before it gets to Congress.  He said the only way to balance the budget without touching mandatory spending is shut down everything except medicare, medicaid, SS and interest on the national debt – obviously not a realistic solution. People who say that we need to cut the budget aren’t addressing the right issues – the issue is “how do we stop entitlements”?  We stop extravagant promises.  Senator Bennett said it is easy to fix social security – he’s been working on it for years.  His plan keeps current benefits as they are, then would maintain that same level for their children and their grandchildren, not a HIGHER benefit for the kids and grandkids.  “It’s not a real cut”, he says, ” just keeping benefits on the same level”.

One of the folks in the room said to him “Your detractors are saying that you are not the conservative you used to be” and mentioned a recent radio ad that dropped the word “conservative” 7 or 8 times.  Senator Bennett admitted it was deliberate and said in his defense: “I believe that free market forces work better than government. I’ve always been on the side of free markets – I supported the first payment of TARRP funds, but that’s the only vote I’ve cast that didn’t qualify. I believed Mitt Romney who said the entire free market system would have collapsed if we didn’t prop up the banks.  I still believe it and still defend it and so does every conservative economist who has ever come before the banking committee.”

Former state Representative Jim Ferrin said “The tragedy to me are the events that led to it – how many years did we have problems accruing in Fannie and Freddie?  How is it that Congress did not know the cancer was growing?”  He also pointedly told the Senator “You have not succeeded in stopping the crap from hitting the fan.”

Senator Bennett admitted that in hindsight there might have been problems, but the fundamental problems were – according to him – over-inflation, “bubbles” – specifically the housing bubble, and mania.  He said it was “not our fault – people got greedy” and further stated that “we will not get out of this until home prices stablilize as a dwelling, not an investment”.

Another audience member asked: “Are you really a conservative and can you be trusted?”  Senator Bennett asked: “What’s your definition of a conservative?”.  He then explained: “My definition of a conservative is Ronald Reagan’s.”  He said he thought Reagan was a dangerous flake on the right. He had gone to a job interview with RR and saw there was going to be an offer. He stopped the campaign manager and told him that “I am not a true believer”.  The campaign manager told him “Don’t worry, neither is the governor”

“I have become a complete convert”, said Bennett, “and believe Ronald Reagan was one of the truly great presidents of our time.”   Bennett believes optimism is the hallmark of a true conservative and Ronald Reagan was fundamentally optimistic.  The other two hallmarks of a “true conservative”, according to the Senator, are patriotism – it’s OK to be an American – and being about solutions.

“I have been criticized because I don’t shout as loudly as others”, he asserted,  “but I am optimistic, I am patriotic and I believe in solutions”.

Bennett now faces three challengers, all claiming to be more conservative than he – Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Tim Bridgewater and Cherilyn Bacon Eager.