First he'll quit, then he won't, then he might again. Mark Souder is the Bret Favre of politics:
Congressman Mark Souder has filed to run for a 9th term in Congress.
Souder told us Monday this may be his final term but he wants to see a number of projects through including the VA Hospital.
"May be" his last term. Believe it when I see it.
Souder got elected in the 1994 "Contract With America" Republican takeover of the House, in large part because that group of candidates promised to do things differently in Washington. Souder pledged to limit himself to 12 years in Congress, but he reneged when the time came to step down. Instead of just apologizing and saying the pledge had been wrong or misguided, as some of his fellow backsliders did, he tried to justify it by saying this district had changed. Well, redistricting is an every-10-years fact of life; districts always change.
This history is important because it looks like Democrats are in the same kind of trouble they were in 1994, and Republicans are eager to capitalize on it just like they did then. But Democrats are in trouble because voters feel like an entrenched bunch of Washington players just isn't listening to them. And Souder has become one of those insiders, by breaking his pledge to the voters.
Something for Republican voters to think about as they look at Souder and his three primary opponents. I really don't feel like sending Tom Hayhurst or any other Democrat to Washington to help bolster President Obama's statist agenda. But I also don't look forward to voting for a Repbulican as the lesser of two evils.
