April 14, 2011

Virginia's Constitutional Conservative Candidate for Senate

By Jamie Radtke

I'm running for the United States Senate in Virginia. In Virginia's Republican primary I will be facing the former Virginia governor, George Allen, who later as United States senator lost in the 2006 election to Jim Webb.

I'm a lifelong Republican, a wife and the mother of three children. I am part of the wave that began sweeping the country in 2009 first by winning statewide seats in Virginia, Kentucky, and New Jersey, then in Congress and across America in 2010. That wave must continue in 2012 and beyond if we are to save America.

Breitbart TV has a clip from 2009 of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean saying, "The debate for the new generation, instead of capitalism or socialism, is we're going to have both, and then which proportion of each should we have to make this all work . . . It's a great thing for the Democratic Party."

America was formed as an "experiment," and has been the greatest generator of wealth in world history. We are an exceptional nation because we are the beacon of freedom. We are a composite of people of every race and origin, so there is nothing unique in our DNA that makes us exceptional. What sets America apart is that we live the "experiment" every day.

We are the beacon of freedom for one reason: we have a government limited by our Constitution. Howard Dean's side, with President Obama leading the way, is willing to compromise the Constitution to achieve its vision.

We also have had many in the Republican Party who have compromised small-government constitutional principles by adding trillions to the debt and creating monster progressive-programs like No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D and then wonder why they lost power.

In 2010, however, we had a new generation of conservative tea party candidates for Congress, people who weren't career politicians, who won. We have forced the hand of the GOP, which I have said is "on probation."

As senator, George Allen was part of the GOP that abandoned small-government conservative principles, and handed America over to the Obama White House, the Harry Reid Senate, and the Nancy Pelosi House of Representatives.

Before the formation of the Tea Party, I was part of Restore the Founders' Vision. With the Tea Party movement, I organized the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation and, last year, the Virginia Tea Party Convention, which was the largest to this date.

I am not a career politician. We need to stop buying the lie that re-electing career politicians is the answer to all our problems...how insane is that thinking? In their place we need leaders who understand and love the Constitution, who will fight to protect the restraints it places on government -- necessary restraints that now are routinely ignored.

Unlike career politicians, I bring a wide array of real-world experience, including work in the private and public sectors (though not in an elected capacity), non-profit service, and civic leadership. I understand the ugly truth of the exploding constitutional and fiscal crises that our current and past leaders have foisted upon us. They cast the votes that got us here, but deny responsibility for where their votes led us.

The challenges we face are enormous, almost unfathomable. Our national debt already eclipses $14 trillion, and the budget President Obama just submitted piles on another $10 trillion over the next ten years. Interest on the debt alone is the fastest growing item on the federal budget -- amazingly, it is growing faster than our economy.

Our children have to repay this debt if the economy hasn't collapsed by then. Once, we worked to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity. Today, Washington works to secure the earnings of our posterity to themselves. Our children have no vote, but they will be left with crippling taxes to pay off this enormous debt.

What our government is doing to our children is clearly immoral, and if it were done in the private sector, it would be considered criminal. Elected and unelected government officials in America were meant to be restrained, and I will help restore those restraints.

If we don't turn things around now, though, our children will instead become subjects of a big, centralized government that serves only big, centralized government. As Thomas Jefferson wrote:

I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

We don't have to fulfill that chilling prophesy; the Founders instituted a system of government through our Constitution that, if fulfilled faithfully, is a solution to institutionalized government corruption and crony capitalism. Government won't follow that constitutionally restrained system on its own, and too many of our elected leaders are either against our system of restrained government, or like too many elected Republicans, are complacent about it -- or complicit with it.

We need leaders willing to lock horns with big, corrupt government and return it to its constitutionally limited role. The prosperity and greatness that freedom fosters will follow. That is my mission.

The space doesn't allow me to get into all the specifics about issues, but I urge you to go to my website and follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

I will bring an unapologetic fight for small-government, constitutional, conservative principles to Washington. We can bring America back from the brink.