It's been a long long time. And recent weeks offered little indication that we'd ever see one of these again.

But we are pleased --- we might even say relieved --- to offer The BRAD BLOG's too-rarely, now-almost-never bestowed "Intellectually Honest Conservative" Award to Texas Republican state Representative Sarah Davis!

We've never figured out how so many Republicans get away with calling themselves "conservative", claiming a belief in "limited government", while still supporting huge and intrusive government programs and restrictions that rob citizens of rights, chief among them, targeted restrictions on women's health issues. Want to get between private citizens and their doctors --- as Republicans pretended to abhor during their fight against health care insurance reform? The GOP has done so for years, and continues to do so in spades, all over the nation.

There are few state legislatures more aggressively inserting Big Government between citizens and their doctors than the state of Texas. With few Democrats in the body to stop them, the GOP's completely not-conservative Big Government "conservatism" continues unabated, with the state Legislature now hoping to even shut down cancer screenings at women's health facilities that they don't care for. And they are using very specifically targeted and powerful Big Government apparatus to simply put them out of business.

One Republican --- just one --- in the TX Legislature has been consistently standing up to them, and using true conservative values to do it...

Davis is standing up for real conservatism that truly honors the idea of "limited government" that her Republican colleagues only pretend to give a damn about. When the state Legislature passed its bill to shut down women's health clinics all over the state in 2013, for example, robbing millions of private citizens of their Constitutional rights in the bargain, Davis was the lone GOPer to vote against the measure.

"A traditional Republican perspective is personal freedom, individual responsibility and limited government. That is, to me, what being a Republican is," Davis said at the time. "So, just as much as I'm opposed to overregulation of industry, I'm opposed to the Legislature practicing medicine."

The state GOP's latest attempt at Big Government intrusion is a plant to further defund Planned Parenthood's Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program which, if successful, Davis now argues, means that women "will die" as a result.

We'll let Rachel Maddow explain the rest of the story, including Davis' latest fight, in the backgrounder and interview with Davis from Thursday night's show, during which the TX Republican explains how her own views are informed by her grueling personal battle with breast cancer. But, suffice to say, while we know little else about Davis' record, so can't vouch for it either way, on this point --- on what should be any true conservative's core value of keeping intrusive government out of the lives of private citizens --- we're happy to award the much-coveted, if rarely-bequeathed "Intellectually Honest Conservative" Award today to Republican Sarah Davis of Texas...

                 

Article Categories: Texas, Rights And Freedoms, Intellectually Honest Conservative Award, Health Care, Republicans