Posted on 12/13/2012 2:15:52 PM PST by neverdem
Over the next couple of years, Barack Obama wants to raise the national debt to $18.9 trillion or so.
John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the congressional Republicans want to raise the national debt to $18.4 trillion or so.
The present leadership of the Republican Party has gone from making the case that government is the problem and the American people are the solution to making the case that Democratic controlled government is the problem and Republican controlled government is the solution.
By giving up on making the case that government is the problem and pivoting to “Democrats are the problem,” the Republican Party has failed the American people. Historically, when parties lost, their leadership went and hid for an appropriate amount of time under a rock after an acceptance of blame and a resignation.
The present Republican leaders in Washington, instead of hiding under a rock, have taken to standing on the rock and demanding conservatives self flagellate. Neither John Boehner nor Mitch McConnell are visionaries. They are survivors. They survive by recognizing the biggest threat to them and trying to befriend it or neutralize it.
Right now, both see conservatives as their biggest threat, not Barack Obama. Why? Because while Barack Obama maintains the White House, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell maintain their positions of power. They exist for power, not for vision. The visions they articulate are routinely backpedaled. Remember the pledge to nowhere the House Republicans concocted in 2010 as a second coming of the Contract With America? Within two months of returning to the majority they’d already ditched their pledge faster than a frat boy fleeing a one night stand. Only conservatives wish to hold them accountable for their breach of trust, thus conservatives are the threat.
The very same Republican leadership who paved the way for the rise of the Democrats in 2006 through moral opaqueness on the role of government in the lives of Americans now seek to shut up and shut out the conservatives who continue to loudly point out that the size and scope of the federal leviathan has grown too unwieldy. More troubling, with the removal of the several of the critics within the party from key committees and a clear message that loud voices of conservatism will not get plumb committee assignments, the incoming freshman class and even the current conservative leaders in the House of Representatives have rolled over.
Let us not kid ourselves. The Republicans intend to strike a last minute deal to cave. They will. They are going blind in the bathroom over the idea of bifurcating tax cuts so Barack Obama can veto the tax cut for high income earners and let the rest slide through. It is, as usual, a too clever by half compromise from the GOP, which has spent more time out negotiating itself to the left than negotiating with the Democrats.
The compromise is no longer the issue. It will happen.
The issue is that the Republican leaders who will be in charge in January are the Republican leaders who were directly complicit in the construction of the fiscal cliff and were directly complicit in getting us already to $16 trillion in national debt. Democrats are not to blame; both parties in Washington are.
Obsequious praise for small government does the Republicans no good when they too are in favor of big government in their actions. And having two leaders as the face of the party who have both been in Washington since 1986 does no good restoring credibility when these multi-decade residents of the swamp wink and smile that they really do think Washington is the problem.
Is it any wonder the American people have come to the conclusion that government isn’t so bad when the party of small government keeps expanding it too? The leaders of the party are the message, not the words. And the message does not resonate because they do not practice what they preach.
Until the Republicans change their message, they will keep losing. Changing the message means changing the men. Will 16 Republicans in the House be brave enough to stand up and say the party needs a new Speaker of the House?
This is not about the compromise. This is not about the fiscal cliff. This is not even about removing Amash, Huelskamp, Schweikert, and Jones. This is about beginning again anew — a process that cannot happen when the faces of the Republican leadership have been in Washington since 1986 expanding government while preaching the need for limiting it.
We let our enemies define us by going along with the name RedState. We let the enemedia tag us with that name. Prior to 2000, the left was always RED!
Its the GOPe I'm really p*ssed at... they abandoned the parapets, threw the bolt off the gate and then turned on the people who had hired them to make a principled stand.
Rodents.
The GOP defined itself by nominating a man who stood for everything that they are against, from romneycare, to abortion, to gay marriage and guns, even down to the details of despising Reagan and conservatism in general, and being an actual cult leader in an anti-Christian cult.
A man who having left the republican party during the Reagan era, came to support, fund raise, and vote for democrats.
A man who snubbed 2008’s veep, the tea party, and social conservatism when he restated his support for homosexuals in the military, homosexual Scout leaders, and came out against the pro-life party platform, a man who actually spent the years of his presidential campaigning, trying to create the myth of Reagan having been “adamantly pro-choice”
The Republicans defined themselves.
Principled stands are fine. Food for thought though, a grand bargain last year as compared to what we are going to get this time. Which do you think would have been better?
Good article. Thanks for posting.
One can’t help but wonder if there are merely two aspects to a single party - the Ruling/Government/Washington Party: with the one sub-party nominally different so as to act as a foil for the other and to corruptly throw the fight for the other.
Both ultimately favor big government, progressivism at slightly different rates, and handing over our sovereignty to globalists. Both favor Marxism to varying degrees. Both trample on the Constitution. Neither are our friend, and in fact both have now declared us enemies.
Madison’s grand experiment is over without another revolution. Everything else is merely sound and fury, signifying nothing.
If the GOPe had made a principled stand last year we’d be dealing with a lame duck president this year.
Just as the Japanese could not fail Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941, today’s democrats cannot fail America. The GOP, however, is like Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel - asleep on the job and failing the people of our country.
Just as the Japanese could not fail Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941, today’s democrats cannot fail America. The GOP, however, is like Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel - asleep on the job and failing the people of our country.
Romney was obviously a loser, in a race that couldn’t be lost, now you have a broken, confused, directionless party that isn’t even sure what it’s politics are anymore, perhaps forever ruined by that disastrous choice of a democrat in all but name, your plan didn’t work out, or did it?
I wish the GOPe were merely caught napping. Instead they're negotiating the number of battleships they should lose.
They probably think Kimmel should have done that. Think how much better it would have been to only sink the USS Arizona but keep the Oklahoma, to suffer heavy damage to the West Virginia, the Nevada, and the Maryland, but to keep the California, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee intact. The GOP might even have given up a couple of carriers for that deal, and called it a victory for American conservative patriotism.
If you are merely wondering, you are about 12-20 years behind the curve.
All your points make this conclusion rock solid.
The GOP-E RINOs are what the Jews call Kapos.
Heck, they defiled themselves. But Romney LOST, which is actually the most heartening thing "Republican" in a long time -- it means conservative and Republican Americans are smarter than the GOPe thought.
Obama is a skinny fraud who needed a lot of vote ginning and shenanigans to win. HE IS VULNERABLE. He and the liberals who support him are the little dog in America, WE Americans who cherish our right to self-determination and freedom from nanny state government, outnumber them in every way except in celebrities and Talking Heads in the MSM. This is a case of a little 10-lb yapper dog getting away with bossing around the 60-lb setter, because the setter hasn't figured out yet how much bigger he really is. But WHEN THAT CHANGES, when conservatives and Republicans and Americans who despise the liberal bias of the MSM, liberalism, and Obama, realize that they're BIGGER and assume the Alpha role instead of the whimpering beta-dog role the GOPe takes now -- we will reclaim a nation that is moral and prosperous in liberty.
Because they're drooling at the prospect of all that new 'revenue' themselves.
Its all theater - boob bait for bubba.
The purpose of government is to increase government.
That’s their bottom line.
Hence, not a damn dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Rats.
The Nation has failed the Nation
A country gets the Government it deserves
The republican party is DEAD.....
(taps)
Fine words and all, but what do you propose to do about it?
It’s not like people like me—26 years old, almost no money, no job, barely scraping up $100 per week, crushing debt, only have a computer because it’s how I earn what little money I can—can buy guns, ammo, and food to stockpile for the oncoming crash, like so many people are gleefully saying they’ll do.
And all the ‘I-told-you-so’s in the world aren’t going to fill the stomach of myself or my family.
So what do I do now?
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