Fresh off the Shutdown, the Sharks are Circling…

While the prognosticators are proclaiming his imminent doom–and by “imminent,” I mean in three years–Utah Senator Mike Lee is making all the appearances of proverbially storming the castle.

Think it’ll work? 

In addition to the predictions of the self-proclaimed geniuses among the news media (see also here), members of the politically well-connected have signaled that Lee’s recent role in the federal government shutdown was not much appreciated. A piece in the Washington Post on Friday feature quotes from Zions Bank‘s Scott Anderson, Romney for President finance chairman Spencer Zwick, former Utah Republican Party Chair Thomas Wright, former Utah state senator Dan Liljenquist, former US ambassador and businessman John Price, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman.  None were pleased with how Lee has represented Utah.

Even as recently as this morning, Governor Gary Herbert‘s Chief of Staff Derek Miller took to the pages of Utah Policy Daily to stab at the Senator in a post headlined with “Putting People Above Politics…the Proof is in the Pudding.” Jabbing that “At a time when our nation suffers at the hands of “constitutional scholar” politicians who lack real world experience, the State of Utah benefits from being led by pragmatic problem-solvers[,]” Miller proposes that pragmatic policy-making that puts people first should take precedence over “principled” stands:

Now that the shutdown is over, we are subject to mind-numbing analysis as pundits argue whether the shutdown was done in pursuit of a principled and just cause or whether it hurt the long-term effort to bring spending under control, reign in entitlements, and repeal and replace ObamaCare.  All this chatter of course belies what’s important – that real people were hurt in real ways.  The finger-pointing between the White House and Congress underscores the sad point that there are too many political games and the public continues to be collateral damage.

Of course, the criticism could just as easily be political opportunism.

Meanwhile, Lee isn’t taking any of this lying down. Yesterday he went to the Heritage Foundation to lay out his version of a conservative agenda in a speech titled “What’s next for conservatives[.]” It lays out four pieces of legislation that are intended to help pull up the poor and help middle class families get ahead.

Then, today Lee introduced the first piece of legislation implementing the ideas in his speech in the “Family Fairness and Opportunity Tax Reform Act.”

Whether his ideas and proposals will hold off the sharks of 2016 is an open question.

Could it work? It might take a miracle.  I’ll look closer at the speech tomorrow.

Related articles

• Gary Herbert and Utah’s solution to park shutdowns (hollyonthehill.com)
• Senator Lee and the Shutdown (utahdatapoints.com)
• News roundup: Ann Coulter says shutdown was ‘magnificent’ (sltrib.com)
• Senator Mike Lee & the Shutdown Strategy (moderatebutpassionate.com)