Will ‘contract’ backfire on Biggs?

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona aspires to be a national figure, not just some guy representing the East Valley in Congress.

This week, he released what he labeled the “America First Contract” for the upcoming election, intended to set an agenda for all Republicans running in 2022. It received plaudits from two influential political outfits on the right, FreedomWorks and Club for Growth. So, it’s at least a little more than a vanity exercise for Biggs, who holds no leadership position in the Republican caucus.

The contract is expressly patterned after Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” published before Republicans took over the House in the 1994 election. In conservative lore, it’s credited, probably excessively, with the victory.

In reality, Democrats are desperate to make this election a choice between policy directions and individual candidates rather than a referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency. They would undoubtedly welcome it if Biggs’ agenda gets some traction, as they welcomed a similar attempt by Sen. Rick Scott, who heads up campaign efforts to recapture the Senate, to establish a pre-election GOP agenda.

The title Biggs gave his effort, “America First Contract,” is just another measure of the extent to which he has mortgaged his political soul to Donald Trump. But the incorporation of Trump’s signature political branding statement provides a bit of humorous disjunction.

The very first item on Biggs’ contract is enacting a balanced budget and referring a balanced budget constitutional amendment to the states.

Trump, however, was a profligate deficit spender. In fact, to the extent excessive fiscal stimulus has contributed to today’s inflation, Trump is at least as complicit as Biden. Arguably more so. Most of the excessive COVID-19 relief spending occurred on Trump’s watch.

Biggs’ contract also offers insight about the extent to which the populist right has drifted from the traditional conservative support for the constitutional principles of federalism.

Those principles hold that the federal government should stick to truly federal matters as enumerated in the Constitution. States and local governments are equally sovereign in their realm and the federal government ought not to be involved or dictate how they handle local issues.

The populist right invokes those principles where it serves their ends and ignores them when it doesn’t.

For example, Biggs’ contract calls for eliminating provisions of federal law that dictate or restrict how states conduct elections, including for federal offices.

However, the contract proposes using federal funding as leverage over such things as school choice, local police budgets and willingness to assist in federal immigration enforcement efforts. In the traditional conservative view, these are things to be left to the judgment of locally elected officials and are none of the federal government’s business.

If Republicans take over Congress, Biden will remain president. In dealing with that situation, Biggs proposes repeating Gingrich’s miscalculation in the 1990s.

In the contract, Biggs proclaims that “Republicans should leverage “mustpass” government funding bills to stop vaccine mandates, secure the border, support our law enforcement, and shrink federal spending to reduce the national debt and produce a balanced federal budget.”

Gingrich pursued such budget brinksmanship against Bill Clinton, resulting in government shutdowns. That contributed significantly to Clinton getting off the political ropes and easily winning reelection in 1996, including carrying Arizona. The tactic worked no better against Barack Obama.

Biggs’ political standing these days is uncertain, nationally and locally.

He shamefully voted to reject Arizona’s Electoral College votes. Information continues to come out about the role he played in Trump’s attempted coup, getting state legislatures, including in Arizona, to designate electors other than those chosen by the voters.

Biggs faces a credible challenger this election in independent Clint Smith. The hope in the Smith camp was that Democrats wouldn’t field a candidate in the race, leaving him to take on Biggs one on one.

This was the strategy that worked in the recall of Russell Pearce. And it is something Democrats are doing in Utah to maximize the chances of defeating Sen. Mike Lee, another erstwhile conservative who mortgaged his political soul to Trump.

But a Democrat has submitted sufficient signatures to be on the ballot, sharply diminishing Smith’s chances.

Biggs had an opportunity to be a principled conservative voice in Congress. But principled conservatism requires a degree of independence from Trump, who is neither principled nor truly conservative.

Biggs went all in for Trumpism instead.