Medicare bill incites House conservatives

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For Rep. Mike Pence, the man who will lead the conservative House Republicans' official caucus in the next Congress, losing his fight last year against the Medicare bill was the legislative equivalent of the Alamo -- a gallant stand for the two dozen conservative opponents and one he hopes will become a rallying cry the next time.

"We were wiped out. There was nothing victorious about the Medicare bill. They won, we lost, that's how it works," Mr. Pence said of the Nov. 22, 2003, vote for which House Republican leaders needed three hours to corral enough Republican votes to pass the $395 billion prescription-drug bill. In the end, 25 Republicans voted against it, while other Republicans swallowed their objections and agreed to help their leaders by voting for it.

"It wasn't just a defeat for the 25 at the Alamo; it was demoralizing for the [House Republican] Conference," Mr. Pence said.

But he said conservatives must learn from that loss, and he believes they have.

"Sometimes even in defeat, good things can come from people taking a principled stance," he said. "In the last year, I've seen colleagues come up and say, 'I'm with you next time.' I think this puts us in a very good position on Social Security reform, on a tax reform that represents no increase in taxes and on advancing the agenda of limited government and putting our house in order."

In a recent interview, the Indiana Republican, who takes over as chairman of the 100-strong conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) next year, said he hopes that when his two years as chairman end, conservatives will have made a serious difference.

"I think it's time conservatives began to act like the majority of the majority," he said.

As a 29-year-old lawyer, he first ran for Congress in 1988 but lost. He ran and lost by a wider margin in 1990. He then put his political career on hold to run a think tank and later become a radio talk-show host.

From the platform of his show, syndicated across Indiana, he built name recognition, then ran for the House again in 2000 and cruised to an easy victory. Now he says he's like "the Frozen Man" because he brings the passion of a guy who was running as part of the early Newt Gingrich revolution of tax reform and shrinking the federal government.

"I'm like a minuteman who shows up 10 years late," he said. "I first ran for Congress before the revolution, and I arrived in Congress after it was over. But in that period of time, I never lost my belief in the principles -- the Reagan principles -- of limited government and traditional moral values that I ran on in the first place."