Posted on 10/20/2009 1:41:05 PM PDT by CounterCounterCulture
“Everything Boxer says about cap and trade is not true.” That’s according to three-term Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine). DeVore is the lesser-known name in the Senate race that features the well-known, if not polarizing, Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. He is trying to steal the spotlight from the two and become California’s next great Republican Senator. But for now, DeVore has to be concerned with Fiorina, who he will most likely face in the Republican primary next June.
DeVore sat down with the SDNR editorial board. Here are some highlights from the interview.
SDNR: If and when Carly Fiorina officially enters the race, how will your campaign change?
CD: It won’t change a dang thing. I look forward to her being in the race. It will put the spotlight on the race and it will give my campaign more name ID. She’s going to bring more interest into this race that would otherwise be a cakewalk for me in the primary. If I can’t beat Carly Fiorina, there’s no way in hell I can beat Barbara Boxer—she’ll be a great tune-up.
SDNR: Were your plans always to run for the Senate?
CD: I’ve never had a desire to be anything. Offices are tools from which you do things with. It just appeared to me that the intellectual vigor of my party had been spent under George W. Bush. There was just no enthusiasm there. As I was pondering the possibilities of four years of democrat rule and probably increased representation in the House and the Senate, I realized we need a movement conservative to run against her, we need to set something up where people have a clear choice between someone who believes that government is the solution for every problem mankind can ever have versus a belief rooted in the founding principles of this nation that government exists to protect our unalienable rights. That the government does not exist as a means to provide us happiness, it just gives us an environment to allow us to pursue happiness.
SDNR: What’s your take on the healthcare debate?
CD: It’s a dangerous thing (universal healthcare). You’re talking about having increased government participation in one-seventh of the economy. When, what is largely wrong with healthcare today is the government to begin with. It’s the free market that brings us high quality fuel to our local gas stations; it’s the free market that brings fresh fruits and vegetables to the grocery stores. You would think something as important as healthcare would cause Americans to say ‘gee the free market works so well in providing us high quality and reasonable costs for everything else, wouldn’t we want more of that for healthcare, not less? But it’s precisely the direction they want to take it. It’s more government intervention in a system, that while it has its blemishes, it’s still the best in the world. If you look at the things that need to be fixed, clearly interstate competition for insurance policies is one big thing. We need to go further in the direction of health savings accounts and get rid of the asinine policy of flex accounts. I mean what brilliant individual thought of that, where you can set aside $4,000 and if you don’t use it by the end of the year you lose it. That makes people overuse healthcare services, because you can’t roll it over--that’s stupid. What you want to do is encourage people to stay healthy by accumulating tax free dollars year-to-year that can only be used for healthcare. That’s why we need to have more things like health savings accounts and not less.
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