I recently met with a conservative Texas Congressman. I will not reveal his name because he did not give me permission and because it’s not the first time I have heard what he told me concerning the disappointing performance of Republican House Leadership since they were returned to power.

“What is it about the November election that Republican leadership doesn’t understand?” That is the first question I ask any Republican elected official who works in Washington. Each response from the numerous conservative Congressmen has been some variation of “they just don’t get it.” The Congressman who I met with said basically what I already knew, “House leadership has no plan to cut spending, repeal ObamaCare and is not conservative.”

Beyond that, the Congressman reported that he’s even heard Speaker Boehner speak derogatorily of the tea party behind closed doors. I’m not surprised. I have often said the Republican elite would like to see the tea party movement go away much more than the Democrats. I spoke last month with another Texas conservative Congressman who reported that Boehner has surrounded himself with “yes” men who are not conservatives and, if they once were, have sold their souls for leadership positions. Do you hear me Jeb Hensarling?

It’s this simple, the House Republican leaders have no plan to cut real federal spending or to repeal ObamaCare. Repealing or defunding ObamaCare was the ONE priority Americans sent the Republicans to do when they were returned to power in the House. I began to sense how things would be when Republicans pledged to cut spending by only $100 billion. $100 billion? Wow. Veni, vidi, durmi! I came, I saw, I yawned! We have a $1.65 TRILLION deficit this year alone! And, of course, Republican leadership has already retreated from the $100 billion to a measly $51 billion. You have to hand it to Republicans, they never fail to disappoint!

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When John Boehner was first elected Republican leader, he said he felt like the dog that caught the car. This is a metaphor for someone who works hard to achieve a major goal, only to be confronted with the age old question “What do we do now?” If Republicans take back the House and Senate, the party will actually be the dog that caught the car.

Victory at the polls means Republicans will inherit an angry electorate that has been voting for change since 2006.  The country is at a crossroads. In one direction there is big, centralized government that usurps the rights of states, local communities, and individual Americans. It’s the job of the Republican leaders to outline another direction, but that direction is not yet clear to them.  This must change before the next election.

Americans punished Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Conventional wisdom said the country wanted change. The truth is that Americans saw no real difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican brand has gone stale and paved the way for a new era of big government and socialism. As Newsweek boldly proclaimed in early 2009, “We are all socialists now.”

Thankfully, the prospect of this socialist era enduring is slim. The American public has learned what socialistic polices really mean. A budget deficit that was $161 billion when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and four years later projected to be $1.47 trillion; and a national debt held by the public that was $5 trillion and four years later projected to be $9.2 trillion. This and a lot more, including a projected $2.6 trillion cost to implement the Democrats’ healthcare bill, have soured the experience of most Americans with a Socialist Golden Age.  As Margaret Thatcher said, “…Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” We just didn’t know that the White House and the Democratic Congress would run out of other people’s money so soon, or that they could accelerate our financial mess so rapidly.

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Since a dialogue is a conversation between two or more people, Washington Democrats’ refusal to acknowledge the voice of the American people betrays their one-party, monologue approach to governance. Tonight, the National Republican Congressional Committee is working to stop the monologue and create a meaningful dialogue between House Republicans and the American people.

Between now and the beginning of the State of the Union address at 9 PM EST, you can either text “UNION” to 777218 or visit our Web site (www.nrcc.org) to sign up to participate in our first-ever mobile text chat room. The NRCC is providing a forum for all concerned Americans to discuss issues that are important to them, framed in the context of the President’s speech. Additionally, national figures such as Dana Perino, Grover Norquist of ATR, Former Senator Fred and Jeri Thompson, Former Congressman Tom Davis and Erick Erickson from Red State will be part of the discussion, providing their personal thoughts on the speech.

Following the speech, we invite you to join us on our Web site for a live streaming video Question and Answer session with me and several of my House colleagues, including Republican Leader John Boehner and NRCC Vice Chairman Greg Walden. This is a unique opportunity to directly engage with House Republican Leadership and Members of Congress and to receive our immediate observations on the President’s speech.

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