Will Buck McKeon's Warmongering End His Political Career In A Redrawn District?

Buck & Schmuck want more wars

California's congressional districts have been severely cut up and will likely end the political dominance of several career politicians. One such politicians who's been demographically on the brink for some time is conservative carbuncle Buck McKeon from CA-25. His massive, unfocused district-- which stretched across deserts and mountains from the outskirts of L.A. to the outskirts of Sacramento, has been trending less and less red, partially because the population has become younger and more ethnically diverse than when McKeon was first elected in 1992. In 2000 Bush won the district with 56% and 4 years later won reelection with 59%. In 2008 McCain lost the district with 48%.

McKeon has never had a well-financed challenger. In 2008, he outperformed McCain by 10% and last year his percentage went up to 62% against the same vanity candidate the Democrats offered. She spent $4,172 and McKeon spent $1,334,144. Although we have mostly covered McKeon's finances in terms of the massive bribes he's taken from student loan companies, now that he's chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, his top 5 career-long campaign "contributors" are military manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, SLM Corp and General Atomics. In all, he's gobbled up $1,047,100 from war contractors, one of only 5 current members of the House who have gotten over a million dollars in bribes from these slimy operators.

So it should probably come as no surprise that he has been the most vocal and persistent defenders of aggressive war and aggressive policies towards funding war of any Member of Congress. His newly drawn district, isn't one that will necessarily support that attitude, especially not with a well-financed opponent-- Dr. Lee Rogers-- eager to talk about McKeon's slavish acquiescence to the Military Industrial Complex front and center for the campaign. And, now-- as you've probably noticed in recent war budget votes-- there's something of a shift in position inside the Republican Party itself. Newsweek covered it Sunday.

The willingness of many in the Tea Party to take the budget knife to defense to stave off tax increases has pitted the vibrant new wing against the GOP’s longtime military hawks. Democrats are eager to exploit the growing divide this fall as a congressional supercommittee tries to find at least another $1.5 trillion in federal spending cuts over the next 10 years.

“I think there is a split on the Republican side about what their priorities are,” concedes Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the special panel.

The Budget Control Act of 2011, the legislation that created the supercommittee to avert what would be the first-ever default on America’s debts, has already cut $350 billion in defense spending over the next decade.

If the supercommittee cannot reach a deal by Nov. 23 and Congress can’t pass one by Dec. 23, a trigger in the law would cut $600 billion more in defense spending, a doomsday scenario for the hawks that is now forcing some Republicans to privately reconsider their opposition to tax increases.

“The Democrats were artful enough to put the squeeze on Republicans by in effect making them choose between raising taxes and cutting defense expenditures,” says former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, who has served in senior national-security jobs in Republican administrations since Reagan.

McKeon has already announced that if forced into that position, he's sticking with the military... yes, even if it means raising taxes on wealthy Republican voters!

House Armed Services Committee chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) prefers preserving military spending to lower taxes. “If it came that I had only two choices—one was a tax increase and one was a cut in defense over and above where we already are-- I would go to strengthen defense,” McKeon told Newsweek last week at a think-tank forum.

Those remarks were quickly renounced by Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, an influential figure among fiscal hawks whose famous no-new-taxes pledge is signed by many GOP candidates.

Norquist has some allies, like many of the Tea Party freshmen and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). “I have always said that everything in the federal ledger should be on the table,” says Cantor, who is open to defense cuts but doesn’t like the trigger provision. “There is no way you can defend every dollar and cent being spent at the Pentagon, just like you can’t defend it somewhere else.”

The new 25th CD should have quite the spirited debate this year. Rogers, who we'll be hearing from in greater depth later this week, isn't one to shy away from a fight. And his positions on war and peace are not encumbered by massive campaign donations from war industries. On his website he's clear about ending the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

America went into these wars with just cause in response to attacks on our own soil.

It’s now been 10 years, our longest war. We can’t continue to fight indefinitely. Since 2001, we’ve spent over $1.2 Trillion on both wars. We continue to spend $10 billion a month in Afghanistan, a country whose whole GDP is only $25 billion.

We’ve achieved our objectives in Afghanistan; we’ve removed the Taliban from power, we’ve eliminated Osama bin Laden. We are victorious!

It’s time to bring our brave men and women home, reunite them with their families, and concentrate our security efforts here.