Posted on 01/14/2013 5:33:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Last week, Politico profiled freshman Congressman Tom Cotton (R-AK) to give their readers a sneak peak at “the ‘hell no’ caucus.” According to the reporters, the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who holds a pair of Harvard degrees is “neither a hick, nor a blowhard.” However, they said, “To much of the country, Cotton is nothing more than a straight, Southern, white, male, ‘radical’ conservative — a befuddling relic of a fading slice of politics.”
Yes, that actually appeared in print; and, it is a caricature the elite media in Washington and New York City are all too willing to blindly adopt. Cotton and others are placed in the “hell no” caucus not because of their lack of ideas, but because they are unwilling to play Washington’s cynical, self-enriching, taxpayer-financed game.
Though not exclusive to Washington, one of the most prevalent games is overpromising with the understanding you will under-deliver.
Just look at President Obama’s nominee to become our nation’s next Treasury Secretary. In 2011, Jack Lew told America the Obama administration’s “budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we're not adding to the debt anymore; we're spending money that we have each year."
Later that year, President Obama fought for and won a $2.1 trillion increase in our nation’s credit limit. 518 days later, outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress – and the taxpayers – that America once again hit its statutory credit limit.
Properly understood, our nation’s debt ceiling serves as an alarm. Until recently, lawmakers have hit a bipartisan snooze button with the empty promise to address our rapidly accumulating debt. As then-Senator Obama explained in 2006, this represented a “failure of leadership.” Washington, he added, could not continue “shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”
Now that congressional Republicans finally agree, President Obama’s response is “hell no.”
On New Year’s Day, he promised, “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed.” Yet by his own assertion seven years earlier, hitting the nation’s debt limit is "a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills."
Under President Obama’s leadership, our nation is on an unsustainable course. A debate over our nation’s debt ceiling is the opportunity for a course correction. Yet on Twitter, one left-wing pundit explained President Obama’s opposition to attaching spending cuts and entitlement reforms to the debt ceiling is all about “setting a precedent that extortion would not be tolerated.”
The political left in America has absolutely no interest in real entitlement reform. They have no interest in reducing spending. And they see any effort to do so as extortion. Perhaps if they spent half as much time coming up with real solutions as they do touting the benefits of a $1 trillion platinum coin, they could look the American people in the eye and say, “we're not adding to the debt anymore.” But hell no!
Jack Lew’s accession to Treasury Secretary will certainly continue that posture.
"Jack Lew said 'No' 999,000 times out of a million," Speaker John Boehner told author Bob Woodward. "At one point I told the president, keep him out of here. I don't need somebody who just knows how to say ‘No.’"
To be clear, Washington is full of bad ideas, and saying no is no vice. Senators such as Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) and Representatives such as Tom Graves (R-GA), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) frequently say no to the Washington status quo that results in more government and less freedom. The distinction is these conservatives bring ideas to the table – ideas that could save this country.
Instead of avoiding the debate, perhaps the left should remember what their hero said during his inaugural address four years ago:
“And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”
Our nation’s debt ceiling serves as nothing but fodder for news outlets and an excuse to make responsibility look dangerous.
In BO’s demented mind, a congress which will do nothing when he governs by executive fiat may be even better than the 2009-2010 congress which simply rubber stamped nearly everything he demanded.
A perfect illustration of the ongoing, increasingly illogical, gratuitous and small minded assault by Liberals in their campaign to demonize and invalidate ANY opposition.
Someone PLEASE remind Liberals that the US is a TWO PARTY system. It's government is designed and meant for optimum functionality WITH two parties!!!
At NO time and nowhere is a ONE party system anything but TYRRANY!
Was that supposed to be an AR rather than an AK? AK is Alaska.
“Cotton is nothing more than a straight, Southern, white, male, ‘radical’ conservative”
It won’t be long until the media somehow accuses him of being racist because his last name is Cotton and slaves picked cotton in the old south......... Watch, it’ll happen.
It should read "Congressman Tom Cotton (R-AR). For a minute I was wondering why a congressman from Alaska was perceived as "Southern."
Liberal or Conservative... NOT.
All of it has become more and more inflammatory...whether in a way that is calculated or not. The presentation AND the content is certainly the most inciting and sensational ‘news’ broadcasting I have EVER seen in my life.
It has become so contentious and irritating that I CANNOT watch. The message (if there IS one) is lost in all the drama and hype.
News outlets have recklessly tumbled headlong after one another in their effort to compete for audience share and now they all function at the level of the ‘vernacular’.
THESE are communications ‘specialists’? THESE are ‘professionals’? THESE are public officials? THESE are ‘journalists’?
The more they sound like that loudmouth shrew in my office or that creep at the checkout... the less credible they are to me!
To get to 57 States, some State name abbreviations have to be used twice.
““To much of the country, Cotton is nothing more than a straight, Southern, white, male, ‘radical’ conservative — a befuddling relic of a fading slice of politics.”
What’s fading in the south are dodo democrats. In a number of states, no democrat holds a state-wide office and state legislatures are dominated by patriots and conservatives.
The dodo bird became extinct because it was slow, stupid and flightless, and the rat party is quickly following that bird to extinction for the same reasons in patriot blue states. Blue states now make up more than half the US population as compared to commie red states. Red state cities are dying.
Leftism and Islam have this much in common - they cannot co-exist with any other ideology because they cannot compete on a level field.
Actually, to get to 57 states, you need a Kenyan as president.
We have lots of people from the south here in Alaska. Most of which are conservative, which we welcome. However, to get elected to congress he would have to “prove himself” an Alaskan by enduring some of our winters.
Apparently you don’t buy the red-blue switcheroo by the left. They really pulled a fast one, the Dems didn’t like being identified with the color of Communism, so they switched to blue- with hardly a whimper from conservatives. They are still reds in my book.
No, it's serving Obama right now as a mcguffin, an intellectual idea that is the fulcrum for his effort to lever the power of the purse away from Congress.
Wow, he just got sworn in!! I listened to an interview on Bill Bennetts show this morning with Rep. Cotton, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a leader and received two degrees from Harvard, this man is very eloquent and has passion. Of course the darkness on the left want to take him out, he is a shining light of love for America.
It’s the opposite of a mcguffin, which usually an object, not an idea, which drives the plot of a story without the audience particularly caring what it is. Mcguffins are there for formal purposes only. The debt ceiling, on the other hand, isn’t useful to Obama unless the people can be tricked into thinking it’s important. The most appropriate storytelling term is perhaps “red herring,” although that doesn’t fit exactly.
May I disagree? It can indeed be a thing (Captain Kidd's treasure), but it can also be an idea, one of the most famous being exemplified by Waiting for Godot. Eventually Godot will arrive, and then we will all go somewhere or do something.
I said it’s usually an object, though it can be an idea. Especially if it could practically be stolen, like a secret formula. As for Waiting for Godot, there isn’t really a plot, so it’s difficult to say there’s a mcguffin. Maybe Godot is a sorta anti-mcguffin. The audience really wants to know who or what he is and is never told, whereas usually we’re told what a mcguffin is but don’t care. Sometimes, like the case in Pulp Fiction, we don’t know what it is, exactly, but don’t much care. Godot we either care about or the play is an utter waste of time.
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