The GOP in Absentia By R. Thomas Risk August 2, 2021
Of the many life lessons my high school wrestling coach taught me, one such gem resonates with me 39 years hence: "Boy Scouts don't win street fights." I find that truism uniquely relevant to today's political pickle.
The late Andrew Breitbart observed that politics is downstream from culture. One upshot thereof is that being the minority party does not absolve elected representatives of their duties. As we saw from 2017–2020, the left has taken to heart the old axiom about the squeaky wheel — despite not having the votes to implement their agenda in Congress, they affected it culturally by being the loudest voices in the media and on the street. The left also understands the phenomenon known in some circles as "Culture Creep," in others as the "Overton Window of Political Possibility" (defined by conceptually.org as "the range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept"), whose relevant gist is that if one does not speak out against the cultural rot taking place a thousand miles away, he will soon find that rot has spread to his front yard. How is the GOP combatting the rot these days?.............
Meanwhile, GOP communications specialist Frank Luntz helps the Biden regime push its vaccine evangelism, with a dutiful assist from GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.
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Evidence of massive fraud mounts in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, which fraud very likely nullified a record-breaking number of votes cast on November 3, 2020. The DOJ issues threats in an effort to derail Arizona's forensic audit, as well as deter such audits in other states. The DNC deploys an army of lawyers to fight those audits, but the RNC is nowhere to be found, despite having cashed in on the controversy..............
When Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016, it was a rude awakening for Democrats. It was time for the Democrats to humbly look inward regarding the reasons they lost the working class and middle America. The Democrats urgently needed to embark on a course of rectification, lest they became politically irrelevant. How did the Democrats react in reality?
Like
the jilted lover who cannot accept rejection, they refused to concede
that the public had voted against them. They were unequivocal that the
fault was not theirs or that of their policies. The voter was called a
bigot. Finally, they launched their most audacious disinformation
campaign of Trump-Russia Collusion. There was not an iota of evidence,
but it was endorsed by almost every Democrat and rogue intelligence
personnel, and it passed through the cacophonous echo chambers of the
news media. Democrat bomb-throwers such as Adam
Schiff and Eric Swalwell tried to outdo each other as they made
preposterous claims such as calling Trump a Russian agent who reported
to Putin.
Republicans,
members of Trump's Cabinet, and pro-Trump voices in the media were
shamed into repeating this blatant falsehood of Russian interference...........
Historically, Democrats and Republicans were merely opposition parties. They had a few shared objectives — prosperity, liberty, and national security. However, they had very different ideas about how to achieve those objectives. It was a political environment well suited to debate and compromise. Then the election of 2000 happened, and something changed. George W. Bush won the presidential election by a mere 537 votes. Losing in such a narrow fashion was too much for the Democrats to cope with. In their rage, they went insane.
The Democrat party has always had radical elements. But up until 2001, the party had mostly kept them at bay. In that year, surrendering to their insanity, they welcomed the guidance of radical leftists — and the purges began. With primary challenges, the leftists began driving moderates from the Democrat party. They even forced Joe Liebermann out of the party — and he had been their vice presidential candidate in the election of 2000. A mere 20 years after that devastating election loss, the likes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar are now the soul of the party. The Democrats no longer share any meaningful common ground with Republicans. After the leftists had taken over the Democrat party, the attacks on Republicans changed....................
The specter of breaching the debt ceiling is once again upon us. Suspension to the nation’s borrowing limit expires July 31. Elected Republicans currently are out of power in the House, Senate, and White House. Accordingly, they have no power to decisively act on the debt ceiling in a positive way. And, they have only a little influence. But, it is a great opportunity for Republican candidates if they would recognize that promises can be made to voters and then resolve that these be met when they are returned to power.
The high water mark for fiscal conservatism over the last couple of generations or so was Newt Gingrich’s House forcing President Bill Clinton to enact balanced budgets. Subsequently, elected Republicans fell off the wagon, so to speak, with the result that, after a while, the Tea Party movement was spawned to re-emphasize fiscal conservatism. This movement, which had a strong influence for some time, has waned. As a result, for more than a dozen years, elected Republicans have authored record deficit spending bills when in power. But, there is a confluence of two forces that gives hope for the future. The first is President Donald Trump’s personification of the stricture to Do What You Said You Would Do. The second is the need for the Republican Party to stand for something significant besides having a different color team jersey................
The current appropriations process almost guarantees ever-higher levels of spending. The favored mechanism has become passing an omnibus spending bill that is too large to be read before passage. It becomes filled with special interest spending. No item is debated on its own merits. Instead of this approach, individual appropriations bills should be required. This reverts to the old mechanism where every spending item is scrutinized for its own worth. The public has time to weigh in and apply pressure on elected members of Congress to vote against unfavored spending. It is precisely for the reason of avoiding accountability that Congress migrated away from individual appropriations bills to omnibus spending bills. Reverting to single appropriations bills likely is the single most effective way to gain a balanced budget............
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