Conscience of a Conservative, by Jeff Flake: on Budget & Economy

Jeff Flake: Big-spending GOP gave away limited government mantle

FLAKE: I got to Congress in 2001, myself and Mike Pence, actually. We had run conservative think tanks, in the '90s. We got elected together. I remember him saying that he felt like that we were Minutemen called up to the battlefront, only to be told the revolution of ideas was over. And we have given into kind of the politics of personal destruction, and quickly to a lot of spending and other things that really, I think, made the ground fertile for the type of politics that we have today. And that's unfortunate. We, as Republicans, gave away the limited government mantle when we spent like crazy while Republicans had the majority in both houses and the White House. And then that forced us to delve into the wedge issues, like flag burning or things like that.