Democrats Seek Obamacare Opt Out For Congress, Boehner Says No

April 26, 2013 2 Comments

It appears Congressional Democrats aren’t too happy that they and their staff are subjected to Obamacare. The original bill did not exempt Congress from the bill and thus Congressmen and their staff are stuck buying health insurance from the exchanges. Rather than save money, it appears that it’s likely to cost Congressional aides as much as $7,000. For a fresh out of college new staffer making $25,000, Obamacare becomes a cost prohibitive career move. Most of the Democrats are seeking to sneak a provision in that would exempt Congress. After some relatively secret talks, Speaker Boehner wants a full repeal rather than a Congressional exemption.

While Congressional Democrats are concerned about their staffers, they also reveal what they’re really worried about. They’re worried about a “brain drain” as smart people move away from work in Congressional offices because of the cost of health insurance thanks to Obamacare. This is part of the problem we have in this country, the supposedly intelligent people are being recruited to work for government rather than the private sector. The Federal government shouldn’t be in competition with the private sector for the best and brightest. If Obamacare forces these people into the private sector because government work isn’t lucrative enough, we should rejoice.

Interestingly enough the Democrats aren’t in the least bit concerned about what Obamacare is going to do to the rest of the country. They’re only concerned with themselves and their staff. That Obamacare will add a massive new tax on people who don’t buy insurance isn’t of much concern to them. Neither is the growing practice of cutting hours so that employees won’t be entitled to health insurance under Obamacare. That’s if employers aren’t dumping employees altogether to avoid the cost of Obamacare. The Democrats aren’t interested in any of that they’re only interested in protecting themselves.

If Boehner holds firm here we should at least give him a little credit. He’s going to subject Congress to the same laws everyone else is subjected to. Surely this can’t be a popular move among Congressional staffs, even within the GOP Caucus. It probably isn’t particularly popular with Congressmen who rely on their Congressional salaries (not all of them are millionaires, many sleep in their offices because they can’t afford a DC apartment). Boehner is doing the right thing though, it may actually be a move that boosts his popularity and perhaps the popularity of Congress. Everyone hates it when Congress exempts themselves, when the Speaker forces Congress to live by the asinine laws they subject everyone else to he’ll at least get some credit.

That Congressional aides are going to be subjected to massive costs because of Obamacare ought to wake Congress up to the fact that this bill is going to be a massive boondoggle beginning next year. It’s expensive, it’s added costs. It doesn’t insure a single person who didn’t have insurance before. The Democrats have to know it’s a big mess, odds are they’re happy about it because it will give them cause to demand single payer socialism in the 2016 or 2020 campaigns. The question is whether the GOP will be able to parlay this boondoggle into a 2016 victory, which could lead to outright repeal or substantial repeal of Obamacare. In the very least, for the time being Congress will be subjected to the same disaster as the rest of us. I hope the staffs of every Congressman feel quite a bit of Obamacare pain.

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What Will Obama’s Legacy Be?

March 7, 2013 3 Comments

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker has an interesting piece about the powerless President Obama. The President last week complained that he doesn’t have a secret formula to force Boehner and the Republicans to see he’s right. This despite the fact that Obama is convinced all reasonable people see things his way. Lizza notes that Obama is one of the few President’s to publicly whine about their power limits. Lizza’s thesis is that in order for a President to be truly successful, he needs to have his party in control of Congress. Otherwise the government is divided and divided government leads to a weak President.

In some respects Lizza is right. Obama has become increasingly powerless against a united Republican opposition. He couldn’t work out a sequestration deal and odds are he’s going to have a hard time getting much of anything passed in the next couple years. The administration has so much as admitted they’re campaigning for 2014, hoping to win back a Democrat House majority. What we’re likely to see in 2013 and 2014 is an administration talking about building bridges with the GOP while refusing to actually sit down and negotiate any deals. When negotiation does take place, Obama will refuse a deal and try to paint the GOP as extreme. It’s all a rouse, he wants no deal because no deal aids the Democrats midterm election arguments.

Lizza’s argument fails because there are two President’s in recent memory who worked with opposition Congress’s and got part of their agenda passed. Reagan worked with a full Democrat Congress for six years and a Democrat House for eight. He negotiated with Congress. He won tax cuts and military spending increases, he gave up cuts to social programs in exchange. Clinton worked with a Republican majority for six years, he won a welfare reform battle where he co-opted the issue winning the reform plan he wanted. In both cases the President worked with and negotiated with Congress. They didn’t get everything they wanted but they got something done.

Obama was elected in 2008 claiming to be post-partisan. In his first week in office he declared that he had won and refused to listen to Republicans concerning the Stimulus bill. He set the tone for his Presidency, he likely had no clue the GOP would win the House in 2010. It’s very en vogue to blame gridlock in Washington on extreme partisanship.The reality is that Democrats and Republicans have been at each others throats in DC for 150 years. There was plenty of partisan rancor when Reagan and Clinton were in the White House. Recall Clinton was impeached while Reagan was subjected to Iran-Contra hearings.

Yet Reagan and Clinton were able to work with an opposition Congress and Obama has not been able to. The media won’t ever put the blame on Obama, they wonder why he can’t just lock them in a room and force Congress to negotiate. However blame certainly can be laid at the steps of the White House. This is a President who spent two years shutting the GOP out, now he wants something from them. That isn’t how it works in politics. You never shut out the opposition, you never get so arrogant as to think you or your party will never lose. A good President understand that he never knows what the future will bring and it’s best to keep as many political doors open as possible.

Obama expects everyone to cater to him because he’s the President. From day one he’s had a very elementary school view of the Presidency. He won’t work with Republicans because Republicans won’t give in to his every demand. When he gets Republicans to agree to something, he suddenly wants more like he did during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiation that gave us sequestration. Obama wants it all, he is unwilling to seriously negotiate. That’s on him, it isn’t on a suddenly united GOP front. When and if the Democrats fail to retake the House next year, the majority of Obama’s Presidency will have been spent on minor squabbles with the House. That will this President’s legacy. If that comes true, it will be on the President alone. The buck stops at the Oval Office.

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Sequestration Didn’t Cause The Sky To Fall

March 2, 2013 2 Comments

It is shocking that any of us woke up this morning. To listen to Obama and the Democrats for the last few weeks you would think that once Sequestration takes effect the world would come to an end. Yet here we are, hanging out online reading articles and going about our regular daily affairs. Imagine that, cutting $85 billion from the Federal budget hasn’t caused the entire Earth to explode. The more days we go along as normal with this dreadful “austerity” the more everyone will realize Obama has been crying wolf all along. Those of us on the right already knew that, those who only marginally pay attention will discover it soon.

Obama had a press conference yesterday that pretty much sums up his administration. At one point he got snippy with a reporter asking “what do you want me to do?” This has been the problem all along, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea how to negotiate with Republicans. In fact, he didn’t know how to negotiate with Democrats when they had super majorities during the first two years of his Presidency. Obama knows how to dictate, he doesn’t know how to govern in a Constitutional government. Obama knows how to rabble rouse in speeches but he doesn’t know how to negotiate a deal. For all of his campaigning against the sequester, he never offered an alternative plan.

Almost as interesting in that press conference is a question posed to Obama about not letting Boehner and McConnell leave during negotiations. Obama points out, much to his chagrin no doubt, that he isn’t a dictator and thus can’t force Boehner to negotiate. It’s interesting that the press seems to think the President has some sort of royal power to force Congress to negotiate with him. Can you think of a more ridiculous question coming out of the press in recent years? Ok, you can. But posed to the President? What sort of clown asks that kind of question?

Having said that, the President hasn’t tried to negotiate with the Republicans on sequester at all. Before that idiotic question was asked, the President had only given the GOP seven minutes of his time. Yesterday Republicans met with Obama for 52 minutes. It’s hardly surprising that a last minute deal couldn’t be reached. Boehner is admittedly under pressure from his caucus not to cave to the President again. Obama has spent the last month campaigning for an elimination of sequester. What Obama never did was demand negotiations. He spent his campaign time whining about the dreaded consequences of sequestration, he called for a change. He never offered a plan and never demanded negotiations. Is anyone then surprised that he met with Republicans for less than an hour this week?

The Federal government badly needs to cut this money from its budget. In fact, we need to go much further in cutting government. We have a President who doesn’t want to go through each Federal agency program by program determining what programs need to be cut. If we had such a President, it would be easy to get rid of $85 billion. There is so much waste, so many duplicate programs that we could probably cut much more than $85 billion. All of this before tackling entitlements. Obama isn’t interested in cutting government, he’s interested in expanding it. He isn’t interested in negotiating with Republicans or offering a plan, he’s interested in demonizing them. The world was supposed to come to an end today, yet here we are and all is perfectly fine.

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Obama Agenda Has One Year; Can Boehner Hold On?

February 22, 2013 2 Comments

According to the President, the only thing holding the GOP together is the “love of helping rich people.” The question of course is whether the President really believes this or whether he’s just playing class warfare games to gin up his base. In the past he’s called Republicans the “enemy” and then he wonders why John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are hostile. It’s one thing for the goons at MSNBC to make such statements, it’s another thing for the President of the United States. Especially when he needs Republicans to pass any of his agenda.

Obama recently lamented that he isn’t the Emperor. No doubt he wishes he had dictatorial powers like other leftists have had over the last century or so. That nasty Constitution keeps getting in his way, as well as the enemy. (read: Republicans) If it were up to the President he would simply eliminate the paltry sequester cuts and replace them with tax increases on the “rich.” Keep in mind Obama’s last tax increase less than two months ago defined rich as 80% of Americans. Thanks to Obama, the average middle class family has $1,000 less in their paychecks this year. It will only get worse when all of Obamacare kicks in next year.

Obama is planning on running around the country campaigning for an end to the sequester that he not only proposed and passed in 2011 but whose elimination he promised to veto just 16 months ago. Supposedly polls show the country would blame the GOP if the sequester isn’t eliminated. Boehner and the GOP have a massive messaging problem but let the country blame the House. The country blamed Obama for any number of issues in his first administration and re-elected him anyway. The country doesn’t think much of the House GOP and they were easily re-elected too. People don’t even know what the sequester is, they’ll forget about it in a couple of weeks no matter what happens.

The President thinks more of his campaigning skills than he should. Keep in mind, this President received millions fewer votes in 2012 and lost two states. He won not because he is personally a great campaigner but because his campaign got its base out to vote and the GOP had a dreadful liberal candidate. No one remembers his stump speeches, it’s his get out the vote and social media efforts that won the election. Let the President go to Virginia next week and give a stump speech. Boehner shouldn’t pay any attention to it.

Obama has but a year to make his second term count. If he can’t pass his major agenda items within this year, odds are he won’t ever pass them. Next year is an election year, nothing of substance is going to pass in an election year. After that, Obama truly becomes a lame duck as both parties begin focusing on the 2016 campaign. Let’s face it, the odds are against the Democrats winning the House. That’s his only hope for those last two years. Most second term President’s focus on foreign policy because their domestic policy largely gets shot down. If Boehner can hold on next week, we have a shot at completely derailing Obama’s second term agenda.

Of course, Boehner won’t hold on. Odds are he’ll cave because he’s a weak Speaker. He gave Obama sequestration in the first place. Rather than argue for what the President proposed, Boehner doesn’t seem to have any message at all. Honestly, what is the Republican message here? It needs to be along the lines of demanding the government cut spending, even if it means cutting spending at our sacred cow: The military. Instead our strange orange speaker is nowhere to be found and the GOP message is muddled. Boehner will probably cave next week in a preview of the next big “crisis” over the debt ceiling in May. One wishes the GOP would just let the world come to an end so everyone can see the world won’t actually come to an end.

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Debt Ceiling Platinum Coin Plan On The Table

January 5, 2013 3 Comments

President Obama seemed to indicate on Tuesday that he would bypass Congress concerning the debt ceiling. With Obama saying he won’t negotiate and John Boehner claiming he won’t negotiate one on one with Obama, we’re headed for a debt ceiling showdown. The Democrats seem to be moving toward a plan which would see the Treasury create platinum coins with a fictitious value. The Federal government would then continue to borrow based on the fictitious amount of the coins despite the debt ceiling not going up. You would think this sort of absurdity would be left to the world of conspiracy web sites. But Rep. Jarrod Nadler is on board as is Sen. Harry Reid.

If this was 1993 the American public would be outraged if a President tried to pull this sort of stunt. But Obama has managed in four years to divide the nation like we haven’t been divided before. We’ve never before had a President declare the other party an “enemy” and then go about treating it as such. To think that the American public would overwhelmingly oppose the platinum coin idea is foolish. Obama supports will jump right on board, Republican opposition will only confirm their support. After all Obama is the savior, the Republicans the enemy. Anything the enemy opposes must be good. That the President is creating magic coins, Obama supporters simply won’t care.

The question then is what do the Republicans do about this if it should happen. It’s clear that the administration is considering this tactic, Obama has long wanted dictatorial powers and has often criticized the fact that he has to deal with Congress. He didn’t even like dealing with Congress when it was controlled by his own party. That Rep. Nadler and Sen. Reid are coming out in support of this idea suggests that the administration is putting out feelers on it and are looking to grow support and pave the way for it. It’s time for the GOP to start considering their response. That response has to go beyond simple outrage.

John Boehner should refuse to bring any spending bill up for a vote if the President creates these magic coins or otherwise circumvents Congress on the debt ceiling. The House should refuse to fund Obamacare, it should refuse to fund the Federal government. If Boehner wants to have some fun, they should pass a spending bill for the military and let it die in the Senate or let the President veto it. Then he can complain about how much Obama and the Democrats hate the troops. Nonsense to be sure but no more nonsense than creating magic platinum coins. If it takes shutting down the government, Boehner has to have the guts to do it and he has to go into this knowing that at least 45% of the country will be on Obama’s side.

The Republicans cannot allow themselves to get caught off guard on this issue. With Sen. Reid talking about it, this is well past the world of tin foil hat conspiracy. With Obama’s declaration that he’ll deal with this matter on his own, without Congress, every imaginable plan must be considered. We have a lame duck President who desires dictatorial powers and who is openly critical of Constitutional checks on his power. The relatively nice guy politics of Clinton have been over for awhile, it’s time for the GOP to catch up. It’s time for the GOP to start formulating a response and a plan of action before Obama actually does something. In the legal world we try to anticipate the arguments and actions of the other side. It’s time for the Republicans, mostly lawyers, to use their legal training.

 

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Fiscal Cliff Deal Raises Taxes On Middle Class

January 4, 2013 22 Comments

Congress rushed through a fiscal cliff deal on Tuesday, only scant details were reported at the time. The President, who couldn’t be bothered to stick around Washington to sign the bill, declared victory because taxes were raised on those making over half a million dollars. Interestingly the upper income tax increases were less than what Boehner had agreed to just a couple weeks ago. The devil here is in the details as middle class Americans will see their taxes increases. In fact, those making $30,000 a year will see a bigger percentage of their income taken in taxes than those making $500,000. While Obama declared victory, he wasn’t even involved in the final bill.

The American media is largely ignoring the fact that over 77% of American families will see their taxes increase thanks to the fiscal cliff bill. The bill eliminated a 2% reduction in social security taxes, which largely benefits the lower and middle classes. The total cost of the tax increase for middle class Americans is $115 billion. That’s $115 billion less we’ll have to pay for groceries, clothes, school supplies or a night out. While Obama is declaring victory, one has to wonder what he actually won. For someone who declared in 2008 he would never raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year, he’s managed to do just that via Obamacare and the fiscal cliff deal.

There is a bigger question as to why Obama is declaring victory. The President wasn’t even involved in the final bill. Harry Reid more or less kicked Obama out of the negotiations and negotiated his own bill with Sen. Mitch McConnell. Joe Biden had more to do with the final negotiations than Obama. In fact, Obama didn’t get half the tax increases he wanted, He only got 75% of the tax increases John Boehner had already agreed to.

Boehner is getting heat for saying he won’t negotiate with Obama one on one anymore. Can anyone blame him? Obama doesn’t negotiate in good faith. He extracts a compromise from the Republicans then demands more. The President apparently believes that it’s the job of Congress to cater to his will and when they don’t he picks up his marbles and goes home. This of course leaves the country at an impasse every single time a major bill must be negotiated as House Republicans aren’t going to simply cater to the President’s will and the President is apparently unwilling to compromise via one on one negotiations.

This is the second major bill passed since the GOP took control of the House that wasn’t negotiated by Obama. The debt ceiling deal in 2011 left Obama out after he demanded more taxes from Boehner who had already caved substantially. That bill was negotiated in Congress, just like the fiscal cliff deal. Both cases saw Obama shut out of the negotiating, largely because of his inability to compromise. Now the President is claiming victory yet he didn’t get half of what he wanted and now he’s responsible for increasing middle and lower income taxes.

We have in the White House a bully in chief who believes he would be better off as a dictator. The House Republicans should let him continue down that path. He needs Congress to pass a debt ceiling deal more than Congress needs it. Let the President make his demands, let him threaten to coin platinum coins and try to borrow off of them in order to circumvent Congress’ debt ceiling. The President can dig his own grave by being obnoxious in his speeches and press conferences. The Republicans should let him do just that while negotiating directly with the Senate or simply refusing to pass spending bills. Obama thinks he has the GOP right where he wants them, weak and incompetent. If Boehner holds true to his promise not to negotiate with Obama, the GOP can turn the tables on the President.

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Fiscal Cliff Deal A Victory For No One

January 1, 2013 2 Comments

Senate Republicans largely caved on a tax increase bill passed at 2am today. For every dollar of spending cuts, there are $41 dollars worth of tax increases. Of course the Senate and the President failed to address the real problem this country faces: Spending. While the Senate and President will run around touting $620 billion in tax increases (interestingly less than the $800 bill Boehner caved to just a couple weeks ago) that figure is over a decade. In other words, it will only bring in $62 billion this year. We have a $1 trillion budget deficit. Do the math, even when you add in $15 billion in allegedly up front spending cuts we’re not even reducing the budget deficit by 8%.

The entire point of this episode was a class warfare. Obama isn’t the slightest bit interested in reducing the budget deficit. He truly cares not about our nation’s $16 trillion debt that is likely to rise to $20 trillion by the end of his term. Whether Obama is a Keynesian or the sort of socialist who doesn’t have a clue about economics, either way Obama is uninterested in addressing the real problem we face. If we Republicans were  honest, we would acknowledge that neither was Mitt Romney as he never presented a plan that seriously reduced spending. Even if we won in November, we’d be facing the same problem and the same refusal to cut spending.

While the media and President will run around today claiming the fiscal cliff was avoided, the fact is they’re only pushing it off a few years. The debt our nation has is unsustainable. Especially so with the paltry economic growth we have faced under Obama. There is going to come a point where we can no longer afford interest payments on this debt. We’ll be forced to decide whether we continue paying for the military, long term unemployment and social security payments or pay interest on the debt. If we refuse to cut, defaulting on our loans will have the same effect as cutting those programs.

Massive cuts in the future could be avoided if we would start cutting now. Small across the board spending cuts, caps on Federal hiring, not replacing retiring employees etc can reduce the deficit. But the Senate and the President refuse to do any of that and the House is leaderless. No party has a mandate to do anything but more of the same. The country either doesn’t care about this problem or doesn’t understand it. Rather than doing what’s best for the country, Congress and the President are playing class warfare games that don’t even amount to a 10% reduction in the annual budget deficit even if their numbers are accurate. If we really wanted to be honest we would acknowledge that despite rate increases the rich will find tax shelters and the Feds won’t walk away with $62 billion in new revenue absent massive economic growth.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think this is some grand deal worked out by the Senate. It barely involved Obama, once again he has displayed a complete inability to negotiate with anyone in Congress. John Boehner was rendered irrelevant a couple weeks ago. If anything House Republicans came out victorious as the tax increases come in at less than what Boehner originally agreed to. Perhaps the Tea Party still has some power, they got a better deal by holding out. But this is hardly a victory for anyone, especially the American people. We still have a government that refuses to address its spending problem.

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Obama Wants To Take Nation Over The Fiscal Cliff

December 24, 2012 9 Comments

One week from today is the last day before we go over the fiscal cliff. It seems unlikely at this point that we won’t go over it. This is what Obama has wanted all along, it’s why he’s in Hawaii right now rather than in Washington negotiating. Remember when Bush spent his August vacation at his Ranch and the media would go mad over it? Where are they now that Obama is in Hawaii? We’re facing a major fiscal crisis, middle class taxes are about to go up and that will cripple our entire class. We’ve already lost income during the last four years, now we’re about to be hit with an on average $2,500 a year tax increase. Obama is in Hawaii and no one seems to care.

Not only does Obama not care about the plight of the middle class, he’s basically refused to negotiate the entire month. Now he’s running around threatening to use his inaugural address and State of the Union speech to attack Republicans if we go over the cliff, as though he won’t attack them otherwise. Obama apparently told Boehner, who at the time offered $800 billion in tax increases, that he gets that for free. He offered Boehner nothing in return. It’s painfully obvious that Obama wants to go over the fiscal cliff. He couldn’t care less about what that means for middle class Americans.

Obama has one goal in mind: Destroy the enemy. Who is the enemy? He has multiple enemies here but the main one is the Republican Party. He’s already vanquished Romney, who apparently didn’t even want to run. (no wonder his campaign was so lackluster) Now he wants to destroy the entire GOP. He’s of course overplaying his cards. If middle class taxes increase, Obama will share in the blame because of his inability to compromise with Republicans. John Boehner may be a dreadful Speaker who cannot control his own Caucus but Obama hasn’t negotiated in good faith with him or any of the Republicans. That’s hardly gone unnoticed.

Obama believes he was given more of a mandate than he really was. He received millions fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008. He lost independents in most of the battle ground states. Obama won because he got his base out and Romney didn’t get his, largely because there are millions of conservative evangelicals won simply won’t vote for a Mormon. But putting the GOP end of it aside, Obama lost independents and he didn’t equal his vote total. He’s the first President to fail to be re-elected with more votes since FDR in 1940 and the first to have that happen on his first run at re-election since Wilson. Obama doesn’t have the mandate he thinks he has.

While Obama is gallivanting around in Hawaii and Boehner is trying to get his Caucus on board with something, anything, the middle class is staring down a massive tax increase. The President is unwilling to compromise in order to protect us, he won’t even meet the Republicans halfway. As such your income taxes will go up dramatically in January. Dividend taxes will triple, capital gains taxes will increase 50%, death taxes will increase. How is this good for the economy? Obama simply doesn’t care, he is hellbent on demonizing the “enemy.” Obama is overplaying his cards, the blame will be shared by both he and the House GOP. Obama’s failure to negotiate, his refusal to compromise will earn him blame.

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Boehner Caves, Is Anyone Surprised?

December 18, 2012 8 Comments

It appears that Speaker John Boehner is going to go with with Nancy Pelosi plan and raise taxes on people earning over $1 million. While the media is calling this a tax cut plan, in reality this is nothing more than an extension of current tax rates for everyone but those earning over $1 million. The plan wouldn’t include any debt ceiling extension nor would it include any spending cuts. Taxes go up January 1st, when spending cuts will happen is anyone’s guess. This is a weak, pathetic move by Boehner. Let’s be honest though, we expected nothing less from a man unashamed of weeping in public.

Not agreeing to spending cuts in exchange for a tax increase is nothing short of a disaster for the GOP. Yes, the debt ceiling remains an issue. But there are those out there who believe Obama can get around the debt ceiling by coining money. The Constitution allows the Treasury to mint and coin money. There are those on the left who believe the government could mint a platinum coin, give it a value of, say, $2 trillion and then rack up debt on the coin. It would be like the Fed printing more money except in this case the coin would never go into circulation. It would sit in a Treasury vault while the Obama administration creates new debt based on the declared value of the coin.

We don’t know that the Obama administration is preparing to put on this sort of a ruse for the American people. But it’s an idea that’s out there and we know there are many on the left, including Paul Krugman, who want Obama to go there and thus take the debt ceiling out of the hands of Congress for good. Let’s say Obama goes down this route, Boehner will have given the President tax increases for nothing and then he’ll be left with a meaningless debt ceiling and no way to for the President to make any cuts at all. Worse, he’s setting up a future showdown over gun control which will be tied to spending cuts by Obama.

We Republicans need to recognize that we have an incompetent running the House Caucus. It’s time for the rank and file to revolt against Boehner. He’s weak and he doesn’t play his cards very well. He’s fallen into one Obama trap after another. Boehner is about to give the President tax increases for nothing while setting up a future showdown where we all know Obama will tie spending cuts to gun control or some other horrible piece of legislation. Even if Obama doesn’t go down the platinum coin route (it’s unlikely that he will) does anyone really believe Boehner is going to get any significant spending cuts in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling?

It’s time to send Boehner back to his tavern in Ohio. We need a Speaker who isn’t going to bow before the President, we need one who can negotiate with this man without weeping. One of the biggest problems the GOP has had since Bush 41 is that we’ve always had very weak appearing leaders. There have been few exceptions and they have usually had such glaring flaws that they’ve been made weak by them. Who the next Speaker should be is anyone’s guess. But does anyone really think the GOP could do worse than Boehner at this point?

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Battle For The Soul Of The GOP

December 4, 2012 25 Comments

The GOP nominated a man for President who is only conservative when standing next to President Obama. Not surprisingly Mitt Romney couldn’t get Republicans to the polls to vote for him. He ended up will fewer votes than the loathed and despised John McCain, in Ohio alone he got 100,000 fewer votes. Conservatives never truly warmed up to Romney and fence sitting Republican voters couldn’t get past the fact that Romney is a Mormon. We were told that Romney was the only guy in the primary who could beat Obama. He didn’t even come close because no one believed he was a conservative.

So what has been the GOP establishment response to Romney’s defeat? Rather than take the blame for delivering the party yet another defeat (Ford, Dole, McCain, Romney…) the establishment has more or less suggested ridding the party of conservatives. We’re now told that we should change our position on illegal immigration, homosexual marriage, abortion, taxes and government spending. In other words, we should go back to the founding principles of the Republican Party. We should once again become a northeastern, liberal, big government, overthrow of Christian faith and morality party. That’s what the Party was when it was created in the 1850′s as a replacement for the big government Whigs, who were themselves an offshoot of the big government, Hamiltonian Federalists.

With this in mind it should come as no surprise that the only Republican in Washington with any power is purging his caucus of conservatives. Speaker John Boehner is removing conservatives from key committee chairs. Meanwhile Boehner offered Obama an $800 billion tax increase yesterday, signed onto by Paul Ryan. Obama quickly rejected the proposal, you knew he would. Obama sees an opportunity to destroy the Republican Party forever by blaming them for the fiscal cliff. Destroying the GOP is more important to Obama than suffering middle class Americans, after all the GOP is the enemy. The fact though is that the GOP is in prime position to destroy itself without Obama’s help.

There is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. It is a battle we are not winning. The last two Presidential losers were handed to us by the progressive establishment which refuses to take the blame for them. In fact, they claim it’s conservatives fault that they lost. We have a House that is full of conservatives but which can’t rid themselves of the establishment puppet Speaker Boehner. We’re going to see an uprising on the right in 2014, it won’t be aimed at Democrats. Instead it will be a primary battle between conservatives and progressive, establishment candidates.

The bigger battle for the soul will take place in 2015 and early 2016 during the Presidential primary. The establishment is already vetting its own candidates, be they Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or some other liberal. Conservatives seem inclined towards Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. There is another conservative though who might be able to bridge the gap between conservatives and the Ron Paul libertarian crazy wing, that’s Sen. Rand Paul. Rand is infinitely more likable and reasonable than his old man, which will appeal to conservatives. His old man alone appeals to libertarians.

We conservatives need to be prepared for this battle. We don’t have the money or the clout that the establishment has. But we need only look back to 1980 when the establishment backed George Bush over Ronald Reagan. We won that primary fight, we can win the 2016 primary fight. But we have to unite behind one candidate. We cannot allow the establishment to split us with three or four conservatives while they all unite behind some dreadful liberal. The battle for the soul of the GOP is on, let’s up we conservatives don’t split ourselves and lose the party.

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