A Babauta Republican

I received Resident Rep. Juan Nekai Babauta’s taxpayer- financed newsletter in the mail yesterday; and after flipping through it, I decided that the “Reporting from Washington” slogan or subtitle should be entirely scrapped. It should instead read as follows, “expanding the influence and control of Washington, D.C. to the Islands of the Northern Marianas.” I believe this would probably be a considerably more accurate statement than the present “reporting from Washington” bit, which sort of has a false Jimmy Stewart “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” ring to it.

Indeed, nearly every time I read Mr. Babauta’s self-promoting newsletter, I get a sickening feeling. I get the impression that he is trying to tell us, to report, “What Big Government–and, in particular, the almighty Federal Government and its assorted bloated bureaucracies–can do for you.”

Mr. Babauta might as well be a registered Democrat, because he surely is no conservative Republican–no limited government Ronald Reagan Republican, whom he would be very wise to emulate.

All things considered, Juan Babauta is probably much closer to Al Gore than he is to George W. Bush. So far, there are no indications that Mr. Babauta is with House Speaker Ben Fitial on major U.S. GOP fundraising activities.

Unlike Mr. Babauta, Speaker Fitial is a real Republican. Mr. Fitial understands meaningful free market economics.

Best of all, Mr. Fitial actually has close working relationships with many influential GOP members in the States, whereas Mr. Babauta’s U.S. GOP credentials are suspect, particularly since he has actively contributed to liberal Democrat political fundraising campaigns in the past, most notably with Hawaii Senator Danny Akaka.

Let it also never be forgotten that, prior to Mr. Fitial’s moves toward working with US GOP House Republicans, nobody in Congress knew of Mr. Babauta. Babauta did not actively make his presence known in US GOP circles. He probably had more interactions with the US Interior Department than with the vital GOP leadership.

In fact, I was once told that many US Republicans did not even know how to pronounce Mr. Babauta’s name. I believe they called him Mr. “Baboota” for the longest time, perhaps even up to the present.

If Babauta is ever going to convince us that we can truly trust him for governor, he should really take a much harder stance against any encroachments upon our local autonomy. He should follow in Mr. Fitial’s footsteps.
Babauta is certainly not defending local autonomy by demanding that we “raise the local minimum wage” and “stop the open door policy.”