Eagle Editorial Board
This could very well be the year Republicans achieve their goal of turning the moderate Chet Edwards, D-Waco, out of office. Five conservative Republicans are seeking the chance to be the one who does so.
Rob Curnock and Dave McIntyre have run before, with Curnock coming within a few percentage points of defeating Edwards two years ago. Also seeking the Repub-lican nomination are political newcomers Timothy De-lasandro, Bill Flores and Chuck Wilson. Delasandro, Flores and Wilson all met with the Editorial Board. Curnock and McIntyre did not.
All five candidates maintain that Nancy Pelosi, the liberal speaker of the House from San Francisco, is leading the country in the wrong direction and that Edwards is a close follower of Pelosi.
Delasandro claims to be the only real conservative in the race, although no doubt the other candidates would disagree. A nurse, he says he is the only candidate with health care experience. He calls for tax-exempt health savings accounts to allow Americans to better control their health care spending. He also calls for tort reform to protect the medical community from frivolous lawsuits and says Medicare and Medicaid need to be overhauled. He calls for allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines.
Delasandro says society needs religious values be-cause they are integral to all values. He says he wants to get back to constitutional governance and would pull the U.S. out of the United Nations and would eliminate the Federal Reserve System.
Delasandro favors a "fair tax" instead of the income tax, saying it would drive the power out of Washington. He said he would not play the "quid pro quo" game of voting for a fellow lawmaker's spending bill in exchange for a vote for his.
Flores said America needs to grow the economic pie rather than reallocate a shrinking pie. He said the real unemployment rate is close to 17 percent if you include those who have stopped looking for work or are in jobs for which they are overqualified. He calls for cutting taxes, which he says is the best way to create jobs. Rather than supporting the stimulus bills, Flores said he would have favored giving taxpayers a tax holiday for eight months, which would have cost the government the same amount of money as the stimulus package of last spring but would have given Americans more money to spend on things important to them, which he said would have created more jobs.
Flores said he would work to cut taxes on business, stop enacting job-destroying laws and work to end regulations that hurt business -- al-though he says there needs to be more regulations in some areas such as Wall Street.
He says America must focus its efforts in Afghan-istan on eliminating the Taliban and helping to stabilize the country. We should not be nation-building in either Afghanistan or Paki-stan, Flores said. He said the U.S. must put together a coalition to cajole Iran to stop its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Further, Flores said, Amer-ica must fully implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Wilson grew up on a cattle farm in McLennan County. He worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 10 years -- including time as a station chief in Africa. For the past 15 years, he has run a small flooring and construction business in Waco. He said he knows how to prosecute a war on terror because of his work with the CIA.
Wilson said the government tries to do too many things that don't make the health care system better. He said tort reform is critical if the cost of health care is to drop. He called for patients to take more responsibility for their own health and called for greater competition among health care providers.
Wilson said Congress should have enacted tax cuts and regulatory reform rather than pass the stimulus program.
Curnock points to his near victory over Edwards two years ago, saying that makes him the best candidate to take on Edwards this year.
McIntyre touts his years of military experience and work in the anti-terror field as making him the best candidate to protect America.
While Flores, McIntyre and Wilson all bring valuable experience to the table. Though he is not the best-financed candidate, nor the chosen horse of the Repub-lican establishment, Wilson's sharp grasp of the issues and his practical approach to addressing the nation's problems are most impressive. His decade on the front line of the war on terror -- followed by his 15 years of success as a small businessman on Main Street, America -- enhance that appeal.
The Eagle recommends a vote for Chuck Wilson for U.S. representative from District 17 in the Republican Primary.
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