An Armey Retires
Era ends.

By NR Editors
From “The Week,” December 31, 2001, issue, of National Review

ick Armey, the first Republican House majority leader in 40 years, announced his intent to retire at the end of his term. It was a second blow to economic conservatives, already contemplating a Senate without Phil Gramm. Armey, like Gramm an economics professor from Texas, spent his nine terms as more a policy entrepreneur than politician. His successes include cutting defense pork with his novel base-closing commission, winning House approval of school choice for D.C. students, and uprooting socialism, foreign and domestic, in both the IMF and agriculture programs. He led the fight against the first Bush's 1990 tax increase, and his fatally accurate diagram of the Clintons' health-care scheme marked the beginning of its end. Shortly after, he drafted the Contract with America, marking the beginning of a new era in Washington. Armey's admirers will miss his dedicated leadership, his unfailing good humor, and his admirable humility.