Judith Kratochvil

About Citizen Governor

Discussions of politics and governing with a moderate approach and according to conservative principles as a card-carrying republican.

What does this mean for the reader?

Let’s start with the card-carrying republican part of the statement. I have been a member of the Republican National Committee since 2007. I agree with most of the party’s platform, but not necessarily how they have put it into policy, more on that later. I also question how campaigns are conducted as well because I believe in civil campaigns.

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Next, lets talk about conservative principles like limited government, low taxes, national security, and pro-life. I look at legislation both governing parties put out and see how it stacks up with the Conservative Check Card from the House Republican Study Committee. I also compare them to the lists of free market principles put out by The Heartland Institute.

Conservative Principles

Finally, I believe in a moderate approach to governing. This means working with people from all sides of an issue until we come up with the best possible solution while allowing principles to be bent but not broken. I realize that no group can totally dominate the policy making process and so I believe the abuses of process that both major parties engage in to get what they desire for their base are unfair to a majority of Americans who would like to see an honest debate and hear all the ideas from both sides so they can decide what is worth pursuing at a given time.

For example, I do not believe in attempting to institute a pro-life policy totally through regulation rather than legislation (although legislation has dealt with the conscience issue). Any time it appears that you want to change a fundamental fact of law that change should go through the Congress and the Senate so the people can honestly review it. Regulations should only be promulgated after a base law has been passed. I also do not believe in doing basic law-making through executive orders or making lasting interpretations of law through presidential or gubernatorial signing statements.

I believe in limited, divided government that has honest debates about when one branch or another breaks the basic tenant of separation of powers embedded in the Constitution. For example, it is fine to complain about a judicial decision with which you disagree, but don’t call every disagreeable decision activist. We need to define activist judge narrowly to mean a direct attempt to legislate from the bench. Legislating from the bench means going farther than interpreting the law or striking down a bad law. It means literally making a pronouncement of what the legislature should have done and telling them exactly how to write the law, like the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts did with regard to gay marriage, in basically giving the legislature the language to write into the law rather than just articualting that they had to find a way to write protections into the law for gay couples. This was a clear act of legislating from the bench. This is just as bad an executive or agency legislating through exectivive orders, signing statements, and regualtions.

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