Hartsuch says Leach is no Republican

State Senator David Hartsuch, a Republican from Bettendorf, had talked for about 12 minutes at The Des Moines Register’s Soap Box on the state fairgrounds when a fairgoer asked him for his reaction to former Congressman Jim Leach’s endorsement of Barack Obama.  As you may know, Leach is a Davenport native and served in congress for 30 years, a good chunk of that time representing the Quad Cities.  Hartsuch, an emergency room doctor in the Quad Cities, is now the Republican candidate in the first congressional district, facing Congressman Bruce Braley (a Democrat from Waterloo) on the November ballot.

"Oh my God, you’re going to ask the question, aren’t you?" Hartsuch said, after the fairgoer said: "Jim Leach."

Hartsuch gave this answer: 

"Let me tell you, for those of you who don’t know me, I ran against a rather liberal senator in a primary two years ago — Maggie Tinsman and what’s interesting is Maggie Tinsman was part of the RLC as was Jim Leach and the RLC — the Republican Leadership Caucus — is based on three things, what they say:  fiscal responsibility, environmentalism and social moderation.  In other words, get the government out of your personal life on the abortion issue and same-sex marriage, etcetera and recently Jim Leach had an article as did Maggie Tinsman in the election campaign magazine saying that moderate Republicans are the largest group of underrepresented individuals and what I thought and basically I am a social and a fiscal conservative.  I don’t fit into that cap and Jim Leach, I believe, indicates where this party or where that group has gone, is that they were not representing the Republican Party values. The Republican values are limited government, lower taxes and stronger families.  That’s what we’re there for and now we have gravitated away from that over the years due to the leadership of people like Jim Leach and I believe that it’s showing exactly where this group has gone.  They were not Republicans to begin with.  They’re not Republicans now and I do believe that Jim Leach has shown his stripes."

Here’s the Radio Iowa story, including comments Hartsuch made to reporters.