Republican Dave Magnum has been campaigning steadily against Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. With the election less than a week away, he spoke with The Daily Cardinal about his stances on issues such as health care, concealed carry laws and his moderate Republicanism.
You were quoted as saying just because there is an \R"" in front of your name does not mean you always agree with the administration.
[If] I get to Congress, obviously I'm going to have to earn everybody's respect, and everybody's going to have to earn my respect too. Maybe for that reason, I'll only last one term. But I'll sleep good while I'm there, and if I come home in two years, that's just why ... When you declare your candidacy, two things happen. Number one, everyone expects you to have all the answers. I have promised everybody that I obviously don't have all the answers if I go to Washington, but what I will take with me is a lot of questions. I'm going to drive people crazy raising my hand, and question people on why we do things. And they're going to say ""Dave, we always do things that way,"" and that's not going to be good enough for me. The second thing is ... all these special interest groups want to box you in ... Because I have not sold my soul to any special-interest devil, when I go to Congress, I'm going to be able to make decisions based on their own merit, fresh data, with as few preconceived notions as possible.
Your opponent has based a large portion of her term in Congress and her campaign on health care. What is your stance on the issue?
I think health care is one of the biggest issues of this campaign. My wife had breast cancer for six years and died 22 months ago ... When any trial lawyer tells me that [health care] isn't an issue in the real world, it is. It's a $28 billion problem in this country ... We need tort reform across the board ... Tammy Baldwin has been talking about this problem for six years but [has] nothing tangible to show for it. We need new ideas.
Concerning the ""R"" next to your name-why are you a Republican?
I'm a Republican because I believe in personal responsibility. I'm one of the most self-disciplined people you will ever meet... I was brought up to believe you take care of yourself, and I believe in smaller government, more power to the individual. ... Tammy believes that there should be a bureaucrat in Washington to solve all of our problems. I don't want bureaucrats solving my problems... That's what a democracy is, it's us as individuals, not some big government that takes care of everybody.
How do you feel about the concealed-carry legislation?
We need to have individual states make that decision so that people can't carry guns from one state to another... The fact is, when you look at states that have it, they don't find that there's a higher incidence of crime. So what I would have to do with that issue really is sit down and really hear first-hand what all of the arguments are... If we do it, obviously we've got to make sure that people have licenses and background checks. As far as gun rights and the NRA, I absolutely agree that we should explore bringing back the assault weapons ban... I look forward to being a part of reviewing that and seeing that it's reinstated.
