Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Republican establishment continues its deckchair choreography

At a time when our country could use a Thomas Jefferson or a John Adams or maybe a George Washington, who are the shining lights of the Republican Party? The increasingly feckless John Boehner and Eric Cantor. It is bad enough that they and their ilk are focusing on the fiscal cliff to the exclusion of waging war on a broad ideological front against the liberal fascism of which the present fiscal crisis is but one battle among many, past and future. But in the middle of this huge struggle with the Democratic Party, which indisputably wants to transform America into a European-style provider state – with all that implies about the restriction and even the elimination of our traditional rights – Boehner and Cantor have found the time to demote several conservative congressmen, removing them from important committee assignments.

You know, I’m really not looking for the proverbial man on a white horse. At this stage, I’ll just settle for not being hemmed in by a troop of myopic idiots mounted on spavined nags whose instinctive reaction to the sound of the guns is to flee and run down their own infantry.

Update: Mark Levin was on fire tonight, and accurately tagged Boehner as a careerist and wheeler-dealer more interested in preserving the status quo (and his own job) than reversing the country's dangerous political trajectory. His show included an interview with one of the Republican congressmen who got bumped. If you have an opportunity, check in tomorrow at Levin's site, when today's program ought to be available, and listen to (at least) the first 20 minutes or so. Boehner is not the person we need at the helm of the congressional Republicans in these perilous times.

6 comments:

SwampWoman said...

I don't think we need Boehner at any time.

Anonymous said...

Deborah Leigh said..Boehner and Cantor are deeply disappointing. What, if anything, can be done to remove Boehner and/or Cantor?

Michael Lonie said...

I'm releuctantly coming to the opinion that it is time to consign the GOP to the same place as the Whigs, and start afresh on the basis of the Tea Parties.

If the GOP Establishment wants to avoid that fate, how about doing the following:

Pass a budget that cuts means-tested entitlements (so-called) by one quarter and continue doing so for the subsequent three years. That would be 250 million, since they are about one trillion dollars per year now. That is, they make up almost all of the deficit. It will never pass the Seante, but then neither has any other budget the House has passed for tha last four years, even when the Dems controlled it.

The Libs want new taxes? Pass the ones Glenn Reynolds has been proposing for months. One would be a 50 percent tax on earnings of people on the executive schedule (Cabinet and subcabinet officials) in excess of what they earned in government afte they leave government employment. Thus for somebody who left government for K-street, for example, who earned $200,000 per year in government and earned $1 million per year after leaving government, there would be a tax of 50 percent on that $800,000 in excess of the $200,000 he got when in government. Such a tax would strike at the "revolving door" of officials profiting from the regulations they wrote and contacts they made while being "public servants." This tax would give the Packs an opportunity to recycle all those Dem talking points about "paying their fair share" and "giving back" to the "community." Libs could hardly object to recycling, now could they?

The other is an excise tax of 20 percent on all movies, DVDs, CDs, and other Hollywood products. Such a tax was levied in the 1950s, but Hollywood got it removed, although its intent was to pay down the debt incurred in winning WWII. Now we have to pay down the debt incurred in losing the "War on Poverty," so it seems fair that loud-mouthed movie industry fat-cats should shoulder some of the burden for policies they championed.

Deny authorization for any expenditures for Obamacare, the new "Consumer Protection" racket, or for continuing resolution spending in excess of that in FY 2007. Again, it won't pass the Seante, but it will draw a line.

Let the sequester go through. Any adverse effects should be blamed on the intransigence of the Dems, and that repeated for the next four years at a high decibel level.

Sue Harry Reid and his consiglieri for failing to obey the law in not passing a budget each year, as the Budget Act of 1974 requires.

Sue once again over Obamacare's unconstitutionality. When CJ Roberts made his mendacious decision, he said the mandate was a tax, which the Dems had denied. But the Obamacare bill originated in the Senate, not the House. The Constitution requires all revenue bills to originate in the House of Reprersentatives. The Obamacare bill had an HR number, but it was purely a fig leaf. The Dems took a totally unrelated bill, removed its language, and inserted the 2,700 pages of Obamacare obfustication into it by amendment. Thus, Obamacare was a revenue (tax) bill originating in the Senate. To say it passes as a House bill allows a sleazy subterfuge for getting around the Constitution's requirement of origination in the House for any future revenue bill. Even liberals, even CJ Roberts, even Thomas Friedman ought to be able to understand that (well, maybe not Tom).

If the GOP is serious about saving the country from a fate worse than Greek, it will have to fight a political guerilla war against the malevolence and stupidities of the Obama Administration.

Let Packs to save the country fight,
tis just about time they started, oh.
Don't let us just fall into the night,
Packs stand fast or we'll be parted, oh.

JeffS said...

What Swampie said.

And Michael.

Michael Lonie said...

Apparently the Pacific Legal Foundation is now making the challenge to Obamacare I desired in the comment above. James Taranto, writing in the WSJ's Best of the Web Today for Tuesday Dec. 4, describes it. He is not optimistic, in fact he thinks it will fail.

Minicapt said...

Michael
The problem is that the House bill used by the Senate to pass the APA was a revenue bill, and the Senate is allowed to propose amendments to such bills. What the House needs is a rule which requires all such amendments to be passed by the House without reconciliation.

Cheers