NH Voters Need to Grill Presidential Candidates

Local Republicans held their biggest fundraiser in many years with more than 250 paying to listen to U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, talk about his work on the House Oversight Committee and his investigatory work into the Benghazi attack and the "Fast and Furious" gun scandal.

ALSO READ: Issa: ‘I Will Get to the Stop of Benghazi’

But mostly Issa wanted to talk presidential politics, and not as a candidate, which was why he asked for the opportunity to come to Concord to chat.

Issa said he hoped to “shape the debate” of the 2016 presidential campaign by calling on voters to get commitments from the candidates of both parties to actually describe how they would perform the job of president that is prescribed in the Constitution under Article 2, Section 1, essentially commanding the country’s standing military forces and ensuring that the rule of law is enforced.

“They’ve been poorly done by this president,” he said.

Issa also called on voters to listen to the candidates, find out what their plans would be, and whether or not they understood the separation of powers with the country’s three branches of government. He said voters should ask whether or not the candidates understand the Bill of Rights and why Americans have the freedoms they have. Issa condemned the National Security Agency’s gathering of data and information on citizens and suggested that voters ask the next presidential candidates who they would nominate for the attorney general position, one of the most critical jobs in the federal government.

While it was the local Lincoln-Reagan dinner, Issa pointed to Eisenhower as the model president, one who understood that government needed to exist but that it didn’t need to grow anymore.

“The government is already too big,” he said, to loud applause. “It already participates in too much of our lives.”

The Affordable Care Act, he said, “was the right thing to do, in name,” noting that the federal government already runs the largest medical services in the world with Medicare, military healthcare, and other programs, costing close to $1 trillion, but the program was implemented incorrectly, he said. Instead, the president and the Democrats approved “21 new taxes and the largest grab of control of the economy and your rights in American history.”

Issa said Republicans shouldn’t just be supporting Republican expansion of government or Democratic expansion of government. Instead, he called on party members to “force, shame, and do whatever it takes to bring our party back to the basics of liberty.” He said there was at least $100 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in the government that could be eliminated. He pointed to more than 40 separate job training programs led by layers of bureaucracy with “a myriad of people” making $200,000 or more instead of one simple program focusing on the issue and having one person responsible for that program. Issa said it was the same with the healthcare.gov website where, even after spending nearly $1 billion, there was no one in charge of the program who could be fired for the debacle.

“These aren’t big things until you look at your budget and find out that the waste in government is about $1,000 per person,” he said.

At the same time that he was critical of Democrats and the president, Issa said Tea Party Republicans were also unprepared to hold the line on the executive branch or even bring themselves to vote for the most conservative proposal that could come before Congress. He said coming up with a compromise was better than letting the president get whatever he wanted. 

Issa also said that other issues distracted some Republicans. He said he was a social conservative but added it was more important to elect a president that was focused on the Constitution, “as it was intended, not as you wish it was intended, to look at the laws as they were written, not as you would have liked them to be written, and direct the government to deliver basic services.”

In the end, it is the voters’ responsibility to grill the future presidential candidates to find out where they really stand on issues before they are elected, including understanding the role of the president, Congress, and the judiciary.

“Hubris of the executive branch isn’t new,” Issa said. “But freedom-loving, liberty-minded Americans, and there are no better than in New Hampshire, have to say it stops with this president … you have an opportunity to shape the debate, for people to pledge to rein in the executive branch. The House and the Senate do not expand their authority by limiting the authority of the executive branch. What they do is their job.”

Issa received a number of ovations at the dinner and answered a few questions. Concord Republicans also gave him some parting gifts, including a jug of New Hampshire maple syrup.