Posted on 07/19/2013 4:01:13 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
Mark Leibovich of the New York Times has written a pretty scathing book about Washington, DC, called This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of the Washington, DC more and more Americans have come to hold in contempt. There exists in Washington a new aristocracy where, for example, a poor boxer from Searchlight, NV, can get elected to the United States Senate, become wealthy enough to live at the Ritz, and see his family profit from K Street.
It is a city where the new aristocrats move and do not want to leave. It is a town in need of an enema.
Consider the Republicans in the United States Senate up for re-election in 2014. Below is a chart I have prepared of their tenure in DC (in some cases the House plus the Senate): Name, State, Tenure
Thad Cochran MS 41
Pat Roberts KS 33
Mitch McConnell KY 29
James Inhofe OK 27
Lindsey Graham SC 21
Saxby Chambliss GA 20
Jeff Sessions AL 17
Susan Collins ME 17
Michael Enzi WY 17
Lamar Alexander TN 12
John Cornyn TX 12
James Risch ID 5
Mike Johanns NE 5
Thad Cochran has been there more than four decades and Pat Roberts three. Mitch McConnell has been in Washington, DC since I was in fifth grade. Are they really the best we can do? Really? Some of them, as you can see by the links, have been in office a very long time and, somehow like Harry Reid on a civil servant’s salary, have done quite well.
No man is indispensable. A time will come when conservatives will look at Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul and wonder why they are still there. But right now, they are the only three putting consistent points on the board. Marco Rubio, save for immigration, often stands with them. All four have been in Washington only a little while. The rest seem more interested in putting coins in their pockets.
Do you really believe that should Thad Cochran or Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham lose their primaries that they would return to their home states? Their home state is Washington, D.C. They are creatures of the city. Old congressman don’t go to their home states, they go to K Street.
The Republican Party has grown stagnant. Our leaders pursue old ideas unable to repackage them for the twenty-first century. They have grown comfortable with Washington’s paternalism and have become convinced the problem is Democrats in charge and not government itself. They talk of small government, but they often do not practice what they preach.
There’s no reason the Republican Party should have to settle. These people have been complicit in designing a campaign system that benefits incumbents. They send their staff to K Street who report back with checks. They pick winners and losers just like Barack Obama does. We just happen to like their picks more than his.
There is no reason we should be satisfied with people who remain in office for forty years. We should be willing to support the term limits one supports by finding and supporting primary challengers. Conservatives in 2014 should embrace a pretty simple rule:
Support credible primary challengers against entrenched, long tenured Republicans.
Even if the challengers lose, the incumbents need to understand they have to start putting points on the board instead of just expecting our support because of the “R” next to their name. They have coasted too long.
More like a high colonic.
Term limits and nuke em’ from space, it’s the only way to be sure.
Or a whole gallon of colonoscopy prep.
What we need is not a new law (term limits) we need educated consumers. The citizens who keep electing these career politicians need to wake up get informed. Why do I get e-mails twice a week from Obama telling me what new communist idea he’s fighting for this week and I have never given him a dime. How do republicans let me know what’s going on? Going on C Span or depending on MSNBC to report their views? It is an underline to the Old of Grand Old Party.
Harry Reid is nothing but a liar and a thief. Organized crime figures have been recorded as saying “We've got clean face in our pocket.”
Clean face, and alternately clown face, are nicknames for Reid.
Reid is involved in dirty land deals in Nevada and many other slimy schemes to defraud and steal from the taxpayer.
In a system with any justice and any moral code Reid would be in prison for life. Instead, he is one of the most powerful men in the country working with the Obama Administration to destroy America.
I didn’t see Steny Hoyers name there. Are all of these people Republicans?
Lets see how many year Steny and Nancy Pelosi have been there, sucking off the government tit and getting richer than Midas.
By the way this guy who wrote this works for the New York Times, one of the major reasons Washington DC is what it is.
Perhaps if they reported the truth instead of their version of it Washington would be a better place.
Certainly Washington needs an enema, but the New York Times would have to get an enema with Mr. Clean before it was cleansed.
I have these wild dreams where a New Confederate Army is walking over the rubble strewn streets of DC, past a devastated Lincoln memorial and planting a Reb flag on the crumbling roof of the Capital. Nancy Pilosi, huge gavel in hand, is chastising the grey troops who laugh at her and take her hostage. I know, I am a dreamer.
“Are all of these people Republicans?”
Yes. The article is abount entrenched republicans. It’s a good article - read it.
The electoral system is broken and hoping for a change through the primaries or the general election has less chance than Don Quixote actually slaying a dragon.
There is, and has been, a one party dictatorship since WWI and we have been boiled like a frog. Do you really think there was a choice in the last two presidential elections? With Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum? Ha!
In Delaware, they don’t even make any semblance of having two parties. The Whigs and the Commies agree ahead of time which offices will be contested and the “contest” is between the incumbent and a sacrificial lamb.
The only way to clean up Versailles on the Potomac is to arrest them all and sentence them to hard labor - for life, without parole.
And to the NSA trolls, FU.
Term limits for ALL senate and congress people be they man or woman, queer or straight. NO MUZZIES allowed (this is America, not some third world country, well not just yet anyway).
Getter done people!!!!
The founding fathers gave us term limits. Each House member runs for re-election every two years. Each Senator every 6 years. Unfortunately, we the people aren’t engaged enough to implement them.
Unmentioned but still interesting is the fact that few ex-congresscritters ever leave the beltway. They never come home.
Explain what term limits will achieve if the electorate remains apathetic and disengaged. That and do you rust those in DC to write a term limits law? I dont....
Most cities need an enema.
If you gave the nation an enema, the nozzle would be inserted in Springfield, ILL-ANNOY.
I concluded this a while ago. His actions are that of a man who is bought and paid for. I am sure that his "benefactors" have some pretty good video of him too.
With term limits, the power will shift from the elected to the staff and bureaucracies. The ignorant will come to Washington and be dependent on their staff and "appointed" advisors. On the surface, nothing will really change. Slap me if I am wrong.
My reasons for not supporting term limits is; the same bad pennies will turn up no matter what. It would give the low information voters even more of an excuse not to pay attention. Imagine some non citizen from Chicago starts in public life as a community organizer, gets elected to state house, then senate, moves to federal government house then senate and then president. Term limits don’t stop his rise to power. Any bumps along the road he rides out in some cushy government job like head of Illinois department of diversity. Just an example that term limits did not slow Obama. He just didn’t have to make that many stops along the way.
As to big money supporting candidates it will always be so. With few exceptions politicians use other people’s money. Just like business it’s all return on investment. If a candidate has it in the bag money flows his way from people that would profit from his term. It’s a fact of life.
I don’t care who the candidate is if he or she is seen as a threat to the nomenklatura (power) they will be savaged by every means at their disposal. Even if it goes past the boundaries of the law if they are successful who will prosecute?
That’s my 2 cents
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