The Tea Partier Who Wasn’t

[Geee]

National Review:


To the voters of New York’s 26th congressional district, Jim Ostrowski, an adviser to candidate Jack Davis, offers a simple dictum: “Send a clear message of change to Washington by voting for Jack on the Tea Party line.”

But the change Davis promises in the special election on May 24 looks awfully similar to the change he promised in 2004 — and in 2006 . . . and in 2008.

That’s because Davis is a one-trick pony.
Years before he donned the mantle of the Tea Party, Davis was a registered Republican. He donated $2,000 to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. He gave another $2,000 to his future opponent, then-representative Tom Reynolds (R., N.Y.). And when he finally saw the light, it was in the hazy glow of a Dick Cheney fundraiser.
Davis, 78, is a founder of I Squared R Element Co., a maker of furnace parts in Akron, N.Y. After foreign competition supposedly forced Davis to lay off 10 percent of his work force, he decided that the GOP’s free-trade stance wasn’t so grand. “The more I studied it, the more I realized it’s destroying America,” he told the Buffalo News. “That’s when I realized the unions and Democrats were on the right side of the issue.”

Protectionism was the panacea for the nation’s ills, he decided. And he was the man to deliver it.