Two good ones we're sending to Washington

Cliff Smith at the American Spectator remarks that House candidate from Alabama Gary Palmer and Senate candidate from Nebraska Ben Sasse haven't been getting as much attention as participants in other races around the country recently - mainly because they're both likely to win handily.

But they're noteworthy for sure.  They'll be great assets on the Hill.

Palmer's creds:

Palmer, an unassuming sixty-year-old white evangelical from a ruby-red Alabama district, is not the kind of candidate that gets the media excited. Yet he may well be the most important congressional freshman in recent history. Around 1980, after spending a dozen years as an engineer, Palmer felt called to political leadership after attending a conference sponsored by Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Yet unlike most of those aspiring to influence public policy, that didn’t initially translate into the desire to run for office. Instead, Palmer started what became the Alabama Policy Institute, the premier think-tank in the state, which he led for twenty-four years.

Initially dedicated to social issues, Palmer’s project became the full-spectrum conservative think tank in Alabama. The Alabama Policy Institute successfully fought a gigantic tax increase, and also successfully advocated for school vouchers, a longtime conservative goal that has been stymied even in conservative states like Utah. This is just a sampling. For more, just check their website: analysis of Alabama’s 2015 budget, papers on how to assure more freedom for local governments or how the legislature should address the state trust fund. Palmer himself has written about Medicaid, education, even Native American issues, and just about everything else you can think of. While state and federal issues are different, they are interrelated and the underlying problems and tensions are usually quite similar. Palmer also has been appointed to several state commissions over the years. When it comes to policy, he already has more knowledge and ideas than most current members of Congress.

If this wasn’t enough, in 1992 Palmer also helped found the State Policy Network, an umbrella group that helps dozens of similarly minded state think-tanks grow by sharing resources, training scholars, and teaching best practices. Furthermore, the State Policy Network provides a forum to share ideas and work together on common issues. The SPN has chocked up a series of victories, and state-level think tanks on the right have flourished. There are now sixty-five, and every state counts at least one. Palmer likes to say he’ll be the only incoming member of Congress with a fifty-state network. He’s right.

So he knows the lay of the land and can dive right into a variety of issues.

Possessor of a master's degree in history that I am, I like Sasse's background:

A Harvard- and Yale-educated Ph.D. in history, Sasse is more a young hotshot reaching his peak than an old hand taking on a new role. Sasse was most recently the president of Midland College, where he turned a large deficit into a large surplus and doubled the student population. However, before this, not only was he an faculty member of the University of Texas, but he served in political and policy capacities in three federal departments: Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. Throw in stints as a management consultant and as chief of staff to Nebraska Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, and you have one of the most broadly and deeply experienced public servants to take office in the Senate since Daniel Patrick Moynihan was first elected back in 1976.

It's a quality field all over the country this time.  We may be at the point where the Tea Party - Establishment divide is morphing into something more constructive.  True, we still have to endure the possibility that Jeb or Chris Christie may suck up considerable campaign-finance oxygen as the 2016 race gets underway in earnest, but we're building a solid bench of folks whose ideas are rooted in unwavering principle.

In short, the situation is improving markedly for conservatives.

All things are relative, of course.  The Most Equal Comrade, while increasingly unpopular, still commands a vast executive branch full of departments and agencies eager to do his bidding.  And we have a sewer for a culture and a populace that could use some actual educating.

But resistance is strengthening.