Gibbs conceded Friday there was considerable Democratic opposition to the Colombia deal, adding that there are doubts about whether newly-elected, tea party-affiliated Republicans would be enthusiastic about trade pacts. Gibbs called them "not your country-club Republicans."Gibbs certainly wasn't alone in pushing this meme. Indeed even some on the right also ignorantly assumed that tea partiers, and the Republican politicians that they swept into office last year, were stark raving protectionists. On the other hand, some more enlightened analysts (including your humble correspondent) quickly rebutted these unfounded allegations about the new GOP freshman class in Congress by citing not trite, partisan/media-induced stereotypes but, you know, actual facts like: (i) support for free trade is perfectly in line with Tea Party support for smaller government, lower taxes and the free market; (ii) Tea Party favorites like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, as well as Tea Party organizations like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party Express, loudly support free trade; and (iii) almost none of the new GOP freshmen ran on a protectionist platform.
He added that there is no firm timeline for pushing the deal, "or, for that matter, the Panama agreement."
Well, once again, we were right and they were wrong. (Shocking, I know.)
A few weeks ago, new GOP Congressmen Tom Reed (R-NY) and Rick Berg (R-ND) drafted a letter to the White House urging President Obama to expressly support congressional efforts to pass the three pending FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea within the next six months. The full letter is available here (and some news reports are here and here). As you can see, it's a pretty straightforward expression of broad support for free trade (and not just exports or FTAs, either), and considering that 66 of 87 - a whopping 78%! - of all GOP freshmen signed on to the Reed-Berg letter, it's abundantly clear that that the White House's and others' claims/fears about "tea party Republicans" and protectionism were totally unfounded.
Now, some critics might argue that this is hardly a resounding exclamation of GOP support for free trade because 21 frosh didn't sign the letter, but these critics would be dead wrong for several reasons, including:
- More than three-fourths of new GOP members were willing to go out on a limb to sign a general letter supporting free trade and the pending FTAs, even though there is no actual implementing legislation on the table (and thus no pressure from leadership or tangible data/law to support their stance). Considering the flak to which this public statement of principles will (needlessly) expose these most-vulnerable of House Members from protectionism-peddlers in the DCCC and elsewhere, and considering that the other side is pressing these very same guys to jump on the protectionism bandwagon, these numbers are pretty darn impressive.
- If you look at the breakdown of signers and non-signers (pasted below; yellow/bold is for signers), you see pretty quickly that about 15 of the 22 non-signers are in very difficult, traditionally trade-skeptical districts (rustbelt, textiles, etc) that would make voting for an FTA pretty politically difficult in even the best of times. So that leaves only about seven folks from states like AL, MS, NH, TN, VA, and WA that shouldn't have a lot of anti-trade constituents and thus should've signed onto the letter. Count these folks as the only "disappointments" of the bunch, and that represents only 8% of the entire gang. Moreover, there are several folks from trade skeptical states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania who did sign on. (Again, pretty darn impressive.) Hopefully, in the coming months some of the non-signers will learn more about the issue (here's a great start), ditch the protectionist myths, Big Government and crony capitalism, and come around on the issue. (And I strongly suspect that many of them will too if/when their votes are needed.)
- The breakdown also shows that Tea Party favorites like Allen West, Tim Scott, Dan Benishek and Kristi Noem are all on board - another strong signal that the "Tea Party protectionism" meme is absolute bunk.
- Finally, from a big picture perspective, this is undeniably good news for the future of not only those pending FTAs but also US trade policy more generally. I'd guess that the Democrats that these GOP freshmen replaced were at least 75-25 against free trade (esp. those 06-08 Dem freshmen who campaigned on, and championed, protectionism - yikes were they bad), and they were probably much worse than that. Indeed, only 4% of all House Democrats in the 110th Congress opposed the House resolution to suspend "fast track" consideration of (and effectively kill) the US-Colombia FTA. So to get 67 new members to wholeheartedly embrace free trade is a very, very good sign.
(And looks like the MSM needs a new excuse too.)
District | Representative |
Alabama 2 | Martha Roby (R) |
Alabama 5 | Mo Brooks (R) |
Arizona 1 | Paul Gosar (R) |
Arizona 3 | Ben Quayle (R) |
Arizona 5 | David Schweikert (R) |
Arkansas 1 | Rick Crawford (R) |
Arkansas 2 | Tim Griffin (R) |
Arkansas 3 | Steve Womack (R) |
California 19 | Jeff Denham (R) |
Colorado 3 | Scott Tipton (R) |
Colorado 4 | Cory Gardner (R) |
Florida 12 | Dennis A. Ross (R) |
Florida 2 | Steve Southerland (R) |
Florida 22 | Allen West (R) |
Florida 24 | Sandy Adams (R) |
Florida 25 | David Rivera (R) |
Florida 5 | Rich Nugent (R) |
Florida 8 | Daniel Webster (R) |
Georgia 7 | Rob Woodall (R) |
Georgia 8 | Austin Scott (R) |
Idaho 1 | Raúl Labrador (R) |
Illinois 10 | Robert Dold (R) |
Illinois 11 | Adam Kinzinger (R) |
Illinois 14 | Randy Hultgren (R) |
Illinois 17 | Bobby Schilling (R) |
Illinois 8 | Joe Walsh (R) |
Indiana 3 | Marlin Stutzman (R ) |
Indiana 4 | Todd Rokita (R) |
Indiana 8 | Larry Bucshon (R) |
Indiana 9 | Todd Young (R) |
Kansas 1 | Tim Huelskamp (R) |
Kansas 3 | Kevin Yoder (R) |
Kansas 4 | Mike Pompeo (R) |
Louisiana 3 | Jeff Landry (R) |
Maryland 1 | Andy Harris (R) |
Michigan 1 | Dan Benishek (R) |
Michigan 2 | Bill Huizenga (R) |
Michigan 3 | Justin Amash (R) |
Michigan 7 | Tim Walberg (R) |
Minnesota 8 | Chip Cravaack (R) |
Mississippi 1 | Alan Nunnelee (R) |
Mississippi 4 | Steven Palazzo (R) |
Missouri 4 | Vicky Hartzler (R) |
Missouri 7 | Billy Long (R) |
Nevada 3 | Joe Heck (R) |
New Hampshire 1 | Frank Guinta (R) |
New Hampshire 2 | Charles Bass (R) |
New Jersey 3 | Jon Runyan (R) |
New Mexico 2 | Steve Pearce (R) |
New York 13 | Michael Grimm (R) |
New York 19 | Nan Hayworth (R) |
New York 20 | Chris Gibson (R) |
New York 24 | Richard Hanna (R) |
New York 25 | Ann Marie Buerkle (R) |
New York 29 | Tom Reed (R ) |
North Carolina 2 | Renee Ellmers (R) |
North Dakota AL | Rick Berg (R) |
Ohio 1 | Steve Chabot (R) |
Ohio 15 | Steve Stivers (R) |
Ohio 16 | Jim Renacci (R) |
Ohio 18 | Bob Gibbs (R) |
Ohio 6 | Bill Johnson (R) |
Oklahoma 5 | James Lankford (R) |
Pennsylvania 10 | Tom Marino (R) |
Pennsylvania 11 | Lou Barletta (R) |
Pennsylvania 3 | Mike Kelly (R) |
Pennsylvania 7 | Pat Meehan (R) |
Pennsylvania 8 | Mike Fitzpatrick (R) |
South Carolina 1 | Tim Scott (R) |
South Carolina 3 | Jeff Duncan (R) |
South Carolina 4 | Trey Gowdy (R) |
South Carolina 5 | Mick Mulvaney (R) |
South Dakota AL | Kristi Noem (R) |
Tennessee 3 | Chuck Fleischmann (R) |
Tennessee 4 | Scott DesJarlais (R) |
Tennessee 6 | Diane Black (R) |
Tennessee 8 | Stephen Fincher (R) |
Texas 17 | Bill Flores (R) |
Texas 23 | Quico Canseco (R) |
Texas 27 | Blake Farenthold (R) |
Virgina 9 | Morgan Griffith (R) |
Virginia 2 | Scott Rigell (R) |
Virginia 5 | Robert Hurt (R) |
Washington 3 | Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) |
West Virginia 1 | David McKinley (R) |
Wisconsin 7 | Sean Duffy (R) |
Wisconsin 8 | Reid Ribble (R) |
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