Yesterday, The Columbus Dispatch reported that Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel is leaning towards a run for Senate in 2012.  Josh Mandel is precisely the person to take out left-wing kook and famed Nazi hunter, Sherrod Brown.  We need Josh in the Senate.

Conservatives worked assiduously in 2012 to elect Republicans who would not only oppose Obama’s proposals, but would also stem the tide of 80 years of socialism.  In other words, we were searching for innovators who would challenge the status quo and quash the profligate spending once and for all.

As the political dynamic of the 112th congress begins to materialize, we can easily decipher the innovators among the group of vapid Senators.  Senators like Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey have taken a leadership role from day one in promoting conservative governance.  Their leadership qualities have been manifest in actions such as Johnson’s fight against ObamaCare, Rubio’s high profile dissent on the CR, Toomey’s leadership on the debt ceiling, Lee’s leadership on all things budget and constitutional government, and  Paul’s leadership on everything including toilet fascism.  Some of the others have shown-in varying degrees- that they are content to follow the path of incrementalism that is promulgated by Republican leadership.  A few of them are so aloof that they have relegated themselves to the status of freshmen seat warmers.

These prosaic bench warmers are by no means Republicans in name only.  They will invariably vote with the Republican Conference most of the time, if not all the time.  However, they lack the gumption or the willingness to challenge the status quo of both political parties.  Only conservative leaders, who have the pugnacity to fight an inexorable battle against the statists, can reverse the inane cycle of government growth.  In 2012, we must elect bold conservative leaders, not uninspiring Republicans who are merely passive in their opposition to perennial statism.  We must stop ‘bringing Lamar Alexanders to Chuck Schumer fights’.

One such leader, Ted Cruz, is already running for Senate in Texas.  He sagaciously described his role as senator in the following way:

“if I simply go to Washington and serve in the U.S. Senate and vote correctly, 100 percent all the time, I will consider myself an abject failure. I’ve asked them to hold me accountable — if that’s all I do, hold me accountable for not doing my job. The reason I’m running is not merely to vote right. What we have a desperate need for is real leadership to stand up and defend free-market principles. And if I am not helping lead the fight, standing there with arrows in my torso, I will not be doing my job.”

Josh Mandel is the paradigm conservative leader who would repudiate the passive incrementalism that is so endemic among Senate Republicans.  At just 33 years old, Mandel has already served 8 years in the Marine Corps, 3 years as a city councilman, 4 years as a state legislator, and is currently the state Treasurer in Ohio.  He graduated first in his class from Marine Corps Boot Camp and first in his class from Marine Corps Intelligence School.  He went on to serve in combat for two distinguished tours in the violent Al-Anbar Province in Iraq.

Mandel has been an unvarnished conservative leader throughout his political career.  As a city councilman in a Democrat city, Mandel led the effort to implement one of the only property tax rollbacks in state history.  Throughout his tenure in the state legislature, he stood up to political correctness and kept his caucus in line.  He described his role in the Statehouse as follows:

“I want you to know I not only campaign as a conservative, but I govern as a conservative as well, “I don’t care how the political winds are blowing. I don’t care what the political pressures are. I have a core set of values and a core set of principles by which I live my life and by which I make decisions down at the Statehouse.”

Cross-posted to Red Meat Conservative