Poor Jerry Lewis - To the Left of John Kerry

Representative Jerry Lewis (CA-41) seems to have it pretty good. A big time Republican leader with money to burn. Still there is the fact that he was convicted Republican felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham's boss on the Appropriation Committee, when Duke was passing out earmarks to based on his "bribe menu." Lewis has his own problems with earmarking and personal lobbyist.

Now the conservative oracle, the Wall Street Journal is attacking Lewis.

For weeks, the Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscally conservative Members, had been negotiating a spending outline with the House leadership. But when they finally struck a deal last week, Mr. Lewis refused to go along and threatened to defeat the budget on the House floor if Speaker Denny Hastert brought it up. With Democrats opposing the budget as a matter of party unity, GOP leaders gave up and left town for Easter recess without a vote on their budget blueprint for 2007.

Political hardball isn't new to Congress, but what's especially notable here is the utter cluelessness by Mr. Lewis and his friends about how much trouble they're in and how to get out of it. The rank-and-file Members who haven't yet gone native in Washington realize that their biggest problem is the disappointment of Republican voters at Congress's free-spending ways. If those voters stay home in November, Mr. Lewis will soon be known as Mr. Ranking Member.

[...]

Mr. Lewis is opposed to any budget reform that would give the President more leverage to limit his ability to spend tax dollars like there's no tomorrow. On the item veto, this puts him to the fiscal left of John Kerry, Al Gore, and, well, it's hard to get any further left than that.

Yikes. Do his constituents in the 41st District realize that their congressman's fiscal position is to the left of John Kerry?