JACKSON, Wyoming -- Whether it's gun control, environmental bureaucrats running amok, or talk of too-high taxes, the Republican loyalists who gathered here this week all seem to agree: Washington is out of control.
A parade of speakers at the Western States Republican Leadership Conference waved around copies of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, then condemned the federal establishment in general, and the Clinton White House in particular.
Some of them even seemed to mean it. "The dishonesty of the Clinton-Gore administration is breathtaking," said Wayne LaPierre, vice president and spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
He said that the Clinton administration has virtually ignored prosecuting violations of existing federal gun laws, and instead has supported increased restrictions on what kinds of firearms average Americans may buy.
"They want to ban guns," he said during a workshop Friday afternoon.
He bragged that the NRA had backed compromise restrictions on gun ownership such as checks at gun shows, and blamed Congressional Democrats for not allowing the bill in question to become law.
William Perry Pendley, president of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, rattled off horror stories of individuals who have had close and unpleasant encounters with the federal government.
One example: The MSLF represented one rancher in court after he was prosecuted for shooting an aggressive grizzly bear that came onto his property. Pendley also gave examples of environmental regulations running amok.
"The Constitution says that private property will not be taken without due process of law," he said.
Rich Galen, a columnist and former press secretary for Newt Gingrich, offered the audience tips on dealing with what he said was an undeniably liberal media.
"We're just not quite as good as the Democrats are at this kind of thing," he said. "What we don't do very well is to tell our side of the story in a cogent fashion."
His suggestion: Become friends, or at least friendly, with local wire service reporters. To buttress his ditch-the-tax-code arguments, GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes quoted Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence.
"You know what the problem is: Everything you do gets taxed," Forbes said. He blamed Washington "critters" for cobbling together an impenetrable tax code.
"The Holy Bible is 783,000 words, [but the IRS code] is 7-1/2 million words and rising. There's no way to reform this thing," Forbes said.
