America’s Senator Profiled in GQ
Read the whole thing. This guy is very cool.
Hat Tip: Instapundit
UPDATE: Dr./Senator Tom Coburn on Social Conservatism Vs. Fiscal Conservatism:
“You can look at abortion, you can look at all the social issues you want, but none of those matter if we’re not good stewards of the nation. I’m not going to be critical of the people who are pro-abortion. They have a different set of values than me. I can see their position, and I won’t demean it. I counsel lots of women—and I love them to death—who have been through abortion. I’ve done two abortions myself, to save the lives of women. When you talk about abortion, emotion gets into it. But you can understand the position of the other side. When you look at what’s happening with the American dollar, it is not as nuanced. The dollar is sliding against all major currencies in the world, because people are losing faith in our ability to repay all these loans. We’re living on borrowed financial time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. Those are the facts…”
“When you’re delivering a baby and the baby’s getting in trouble, and you can see the baby’s heartbeat, which is normally about 130 or 140 beats per minute, going down to fifty or sixty, and you’re standing there watching it go down, you know you’ve got about three minutes to make a decision. You can use a pair of forceps and try to pull it out, you can use a vacuum extractor, or you can leave labor and delivery, put her on the table, put her to sleep, cut a hole in her belly, and take it out with a C-section—but you’ve got to do something, and you’ve got to do it now. That baby’s life depends on what you do in those three minutes. And that’s exactly where we are in our country today. We are in those critical three minutes. If we wait to act, it’s going to be too late. We’re going to lose the baby.” (emphasis mine)
Coburn is exactly right. I have friends who are “conservatives” who support Republicans because they are concerned about social issues like abortion and homosexuality. When I point out how bad Republicans have been for the fiscal health of our nation they lack much concern at all about the poor economic judgement their party has shown. The really sad thing is that it is the economic stuff that is actually vital to the survival of our republic.
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I especially liked this quote.
We need to be honest with the American people. And we’re not. We’re terrible. We’re not even honest about the numbers. We put out figures like we had a $300 billion deficit last year when in fact we had a $520 billion deficit. We’ve been lying about it. We use the same accounting tactics as Enron. If we applied the same standards to Congress that we apply to Enron, everybody here would go to jail.”
Comment by Tyler Farrer — January 30, 2007 @ 3:05 pm
The lack of fiscal responsibility steams me. It seems to generally infect whichever politicians are in charge regardless of which side of the aisle they are on.
Comment by Reach Upward — January 31, 2007 @ 2:08 pm