Message from Tim Bridgewater, Candidate for U.S. Senate

Leaving the GOP convention with a convincing 15 point lead over my challenger in the primary, I was invited to publish an op-ed piece in the Washington Post <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/13/AR2010051304751.html>. I believe that the delegates’ choice to retire Senator Bennett was a call to "return to a higher standard" – that standard of limited federal powers and strong states’ rights envisioned by the Founders.

We have seen a rejection of a government that is "too far away, too detached and insufficiently attuned to what was happening in this country" – but 2009/2010 was not the first time. Back in 1773, a group of patriots rebelled against government over-reach – and yes, tyranny – and started a movement which swept the incumbents of their day out of "office".

In the Washington Post article, I was able to point out how our Founding Fathers created a system of government built on the principle that individuals have God-given rights. Those founders gave us horizontal separation between the 3 branches of government, but also a vertical separation between the federal government and the states. Over time, that vertical separation of power has almost disappeared.

Today, the federal government feels it can manage even the details of personal health care and education. States have been relegated to administrative units of a central leviathan, in a system of plunder in which each state tries to live at the expense of the others. In such a system, experience in Washington is valuable. But Utah Republicans rejected that model of governance and so rejected the Washington veteran.

On a practical level, I think Saturday’s results reflected voters’ fear that Washington cannot control its spending. Bob Bennett, for all his considerable merits, was simply too comfortable in a Washington that routinely ignores those concerns and resorts to spending whenever there is a problem.

The Permanent Ruling Class in Washington tells us that Congress is capable of managing the fast-growing telecommunications industry, that it knows how credit should be allocated and that it has the expertise to decide which financial institutions are too big, which are too small and which are "just right."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Washington’s track record stinks. Congress has given us more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare. Lawmakers encouraged a housing bubble and then took hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers when it burst. There is no reason to think Congress can do a better job this time than when it tried to manage energy in the 1970s and ’80s.

It is time for a little humility in Washington. The Founders left us a better way. It is time to return to that better way.

I invite you to join our campaign and send a Washington a message that the days of wink-and-a-nod politics are over. Please visit my website at www.TimBridgewater.com for more information and to sign up to volunteer.

Thank you.

Tim Bridgewater