I understand Rush Limbaugh commented today on the GOP tendency to self-destruction, noting this comment,
It’s pretty clear the American people expect us to use the existing gridlock to create compromise and advance their agenda. They want us to come together [with the administration] after we agree to disagree.
from Rep. Darrell Issa (R., CA).
As the linked article notes, the GOP elite are showing signs that they fear a repetition of what happened to them in 1995 after major victories in the 1994 mid-term elections. That lesson is the wrong one to which to attend. I would have been happy if the government stayed shut down then. Today, tens of millions more people agree.
I expect the Republicans to obstruct, deny, vilify, denounce, stonewall, jam, and reject the far-left agenda of this arrogant President. I expect them to reverse, not revise, the ill-advised laws already passed. I expect them to stand up for the principle of limited government. It will be hard. It may even cost them dearly. But if they compromise this time, they will have abandoned their oath of office. Again.
They had better be thinking that compromise with poisonous policies means the death of their party. If anyone should be compromising it should be the Democrats. They increased the debt by 3 trillion dollars to no effect. They have shoved legislation down our throats. They have applied draconian regulation where they could not legislate. They have suspended the rule of law in examples ranging from contracts, to voter intimidation, to enforcement of US sovereignty. There is no compromise with this cadre of Progressives, because that compromise will kill this country. But first, it will kill the GOP.
The “Pledge to America,” is barely enough to start with. It is anemic on cutting spending. But you can be sure that it is the position from which the Democrats will expect the GOP to compromise. The statists have already denounced the pledge as extreme. Will left-wing fire coming from MoveOn, ACORN, the NAACP and the MSM be less withering after an electoral rejection? Will George Soros decide to give his money to the Chamber of Commerce? Those usual suspects already criticize the President for only having taken half-measures.
Advertising a willingness to compromise on the brink of an electoral blowout is much worse than a bad negotiating tactic, it portends a spineless betrayal. Again.
Amen to all of that.I am a slow learner but eventually even I caught on. It took the utter collapse of Republican conservative principles before I decided that I would not take GOP leadership at the words of their collective campaigns. We went from a Contract With America to Tom Delay saying “there is no more fat to cut in the budget.” The Republican Party became just another generic political party when its senate leader could declare that he “had heard enough from the Porkbusters.” Our most recent Republican president completely lost his veto pen for the first seven years of his administration. I will trust this group of Republican leaders only as far as they have proven that they deserve it–not at all. My election celebration, providing that the Republicans take back at least the House and perhaps the Senate, will last about fifteen minutes. At that point, it is back to work.
Speaking of spineless, I did not vote for Mike Rogers.If that means more Canadian's will purchase landfills in Michigan, so be it.