Boehner’s Bootlickers Continued: The Ohio Opportunist vs. Matt Lynch

This is a continuation of our series highlighting members who represent the priorities of House Speaker John Boehner and leadership instead of conservatives. You can view the previous posts here: Part 1 , Part 2 Part 3 ,Part 4.

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Not surprisingly, Ohio is filled with GOP members who serve as Boehner bootlickers, due to his presence in the state’s delegation.  Conservatives have a lot of work to do in the critical Buckeye state.

Ohio’s 14th district was represented by Steve LaTourette, the leader of the liberal-wing of the party, for 18 years.  After becoming head of the liberal Republican Mainstreet Partnership, LaTourette left Congress to lead the fight against conservatives from the outside.  However, he made sure to announce his retirement after the 2012 primaries, ensuring that his hand-picked acolyte, Dave Joyce, would be chosen to succeed him as the GOP candidate on the November ballot.

Predictably, Joyce has been voting a lot like his mentor.  As a member of the Appropriations Committee, he has fit in well with those who supported all of the major spending bills, subsidies, funding for Obamacare, and has earned a failing score from all of the conservative groups.  And of course, he is a member of the Mainstreet Partnership.  He has made it clear that he has no intention of pushing for full repeal of Obamacare, much like his puppet master, John Boehner.

Yet, like most deceptive moderates who seek a permanent political career, Joyce is running for reelection as a ”principled conservative.”

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Luckily, conservatives have an opportunity next Tuesday to right this ship and elect someone who is the antithesis of the Boehner/LaTourette axis.  The establishment is worried, as witnessed by Boehner’s staffers canvassing support for Joyce with out-of-state astroturfers and the Chamber dumping in six-figure TV buys.  He is also getting money from Big Labor.

In 2012, Matt Lynch ran in a special election to fill a vacant state house seat and won with overwhelming support.  Like so many of us on a national level during the Bush years, Lynch was excited by the fact that Ohio’s government was completely controlled by Republicans.  But he soon realized that he would have to fight his own party in order to fulfill his campaign promises.

Much like Ted Cruz, Lynch refused to remain silent even though he was a freshman and almost “an accidental” representative. He began organizing a group of like-minded conservatives to plot strategy on legislation.  After Governor Kasich came out in support of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, Lynch helped lead the fight to defeat it in the legislature.  When Kasich proceeded to act like Obama and implement the expansion administratively, Lynch joined in the lawsuit against his own party’s leader to fight the power grab.

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As such, it’s no surprise that the pro-Obamacare American Hospital Association is spending big to defend Joyce.

Additionally, Lynch has been the state leader in fighting against illegal immigration.  When Kasich allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver’s license with the stroke of a pen from an executive order, Lynch introduced legislation to block it.  When the Ohio Board of Regents unilaterally granted illegals in-state tuition to colleges, Lynch introduced legislation to defend Ohio residents.  In addition, he introduced a bill authorizing local law enforcement to help with interior enforcement.  Needless to say, his bills were blocked by the GOP establishment.

Last year, Governor Kasich proposed a budget that included targeted income tax cuts.  But instead of cutting spending, it increased spending by $7 billion and raised the state’s sales tax and eliminated a credit for property taxes.  Lynch was one of the few Republicans to vote against the budget.  Amazingly, Joyce is accusing Lynch of opposing tax cuts by voting against the budget.  He is also accusing him of opposing the pro-life provisions in the budget bill.  But those provisions only got there because they were adopted from a bill supported by Lynch, which is why he has earned the support of the Ohio Right to Life.

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Hence, not only is Matt Lynch a full-spectrum conservative on the issues, he understands all of the shiny objects and duplicity used by establishment Republicans to obfuscate an anti-conservative agenda.

Every candidate runs as a conservative and many even claim to be against the failed establishment, but few candidates have actually fought and bled for the cause the way Lynch has done in his few years in Columbus.  In fact, he has already done on a local level everything any of us would expect from a new member in Washington.

The contrast could not be any clearer, the choice any bolder.

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