Former U.S. senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming) passed away on Wednesday at age 78. The Washington Post obit for him has a quote from one of his Cato appearances:

Sen. Wallop was unapologetically conservative as a Republican, a position that sometimes drew ire from members of his own party.

“Too many Republicans prefer to be a Democrat Lite,” he said in a speech at the Cato Institute in 1994. “As any beer connoisseur can tell you, Lite is a tasteless, repugnant concoction.”

Way before the Tea Party came along, he penned a scathing and wide-ranging critique of the expansive growth of the federal government in the February 1994 issue of National Review, “Can Conservatives Take America Back?”  That article is well worth rereading.  Unfortunately, no on-line link seems to be available, but perhaps that will change soon.

Wallop also spoke out against federal power-grabs that came in antiterrorism packaging.