{"id":49560,"date":"2021-10-31T01:38:27","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T01:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49560"},"modified":"2021-10-31T01:38:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-31T01:38:27","slug":"combest-cast-his-loyalty-in-proper-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49560","title":{"rendered":"Combest cast his loyalty in proper direction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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All this talk we hear these days about \u201cloyalty\u201d to an individual rather than to the Constitution or to constituents who politicians represent brings to mind a story I related this evening to a friend of mine as we left a college football game in Commerce, Texas.<\/p>\n

It involves a former congressman I got to know well while I worked as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. His name is Larry Combest, a Republican from Lubbock who for years represented the 19th Congressional District, which for a time included the southern half of Amarillo.<\/p>\n

Combest was, in the term of art applied these days, a \u201ctraditional Republican conservative.\u201d He also was unafraid to buck the dictates of his political leadership.<\/p>\n

In 1994, when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House, the Republican majority decided to reconfigure federal farm policy. The GOP-led House produced something called Freedom to Farm. Combest, whose congressional district included vast stretches of cultivated farm land and ranch land, didn\u2019t like what the legislation contained. He said it treated the cattle ranchers and farmers who helped elect him badly. He refused to sign on to the legislation.<\/p>\n

Combest\u2019s refusal to buy into Freedom to Farm incurred Gingrich\u2019s anger. He scolded Combest privately, or so I was led at the time to believe. Combest didn\u2019t budge. He told Gingrich \u2014 and I heard this through back channels \u2014 that he didn\u2019t work for the speaker. He worked for the people of West Texas, who told him they didn\u2019t like the direction that the new federal farm policy was heading. Combest wasn\u2019t going to give in to the dictates of the House political leadership.<\/p>\n

Combest held his ground, even though it cost him \u2014 in the immediate term \u2014 an appointment as House Agriculture Committee chairman; he would become chairman, if memory serves, sometime after Gingrich left the House amid a personal scandal and when the GOP lost ground in subsequent midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The point of this little essay is to illustrate that politicians should put the needs of their constituents above the needs of political leaders who harbor delusions of grandeur and godhood. Larry Combest knew who sent him to Congress and he honored his commitment to them rather than to a bomb-throwing ideologue.<\/p>\n

We need a lot more of that kind of loyalty rather than what we are seeing being playing out these days in Washington.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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All this talk we hear these days about \u201cloyalty\u201d to an individual rather than to the Constitution or to constituents who politicians represent brings to mind a story I related this evening to a friend of mine as we left a college football game in Commerce, Texas. It involves a former congressman I got to … Continue reading Combest cast his loyalty in proper direction<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2732,7990],"class_list":["post-49560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-larry-combest","tag-loyalty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49561,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49560\/revisions\/49561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}