Surrender: Why does anyone ever vote for the Republican Party... at least one run by Boehner & McConnell?

Do you ever wonder sometimes why Americans vote? How many times have you heard people say “I don’t vote because my vote doesn’t really matter, those politicians are going to do what they want regardless of how I vote.” In some cases that’s true. Obamacare was a perfect example. In January 2010 Scott Brown won his campaign for the Senate in deep blue Massachusetts by promising to be the 41st vote against Obamacare. The Democrats didn’t care, and despite the fact that 60% of the American people were opposed to Obamacare, they sidestepped Brown and used “reconciliation” to shove the law down the throats of the American people. As a result, that November the GOP retook the House in a landslide election, but by that point the damage had ever been done. If there was ever an example of politicians doing exactly what they wanted in the face of constituent opposition, Obamacare was it.

So why did citizens reward Democrats in 2012 and send Barack Obama back to work? Because presidential elections are personality driven contests (as opposed to issue driven contests) far more than are midterms, with the presidential candidates generating an unparalleled level of attention. Voters in midterm elections are generally more engaged and more aware of the issues than many who vote in presidential elections. Not sure? How many videos did you see in 2008 where voters could barely name the vice presidential candidates, nevermind the issues or candidates lower down the ticket. That reality repeated itself in 2012 with the cult of Barack Obama. Add to that the fact that Mittens Romney ran a campaign so uninspiring that millions of conservatives didn’t even bother to show up and it’s easy to understand how the country got another 4 years of The One.

Just two years later however, 2014 proved to be 2010 on steroids as the GOP picked up 9 seats in the Senate. Why? Not only had Obamacare proven to be exactly the disaster Republicans had predicted, but more timely was the fact that Barack Obama was basically promising amnesty to 4 million illegal immigrants. For the GOP, the numbers were clear: fully 70% of GOP voters were against Obama’s amnesty and at the end of the day those voters delivered a victory.

But alas, that doesn’t seem to matter. Like the Democrats in 2010 voting for something 60% of the Americans didn’t want, in 2014 the Republican leadership plans to ignore the wishes of 70% of their constituents by surrendering on immigration.

Surrender? That is essentially what the leadership has done as it promises there will be no government shutdown. The purse strings are one of the few checks the legislative branch has on the executive. As such, the primary way Congress can impact what the administration does is by deciding what to fund and what not to fund. In this context, a shutdown would occur when Congress passes a bill to fund the entire government except for those DHS functions involved in the president’s amnesty and then the president vetoes it. No dice say Boehner and McConnell. They are scared that the GOP would be blamed for any shutdown and get hammered in 2016. That’s an illusion, as most of the government would still function, and, frankly, most Americans wouldn’t even notice a shutdown were it not for the bleating of the administration’s media minions. In last year’s shutdown, once it was over a full 78% of Americans reported that they weren’t inconvenienced by the shutdown at all and another 11% felt only minor inconveniences. And a year later the GOP went on to flatten the Democrats in the midterms!

So the question is, why would anyone bother to vote for the GOP in the first place? What’s the point? If they are going to rail against the president acting unconstitutionally but take the single most powerful weapon for stopping him off the table, what’s the difference between the parties besides rhetoric? The truth is, now that they are firmly back in power, Boehner and McConnell feel like they have no obligation to respect their voter’s wishes. Apparently the desire of the Chamber of Commerce’s members for cheap labor trumps Republican voter’s opposition to amnesty.

Such has become life in America in the 21st Century. Half of the voters don’t bother to vote because they feel like their votes don’t count and the other half go to the polls to prove them right. Barack Obama has demonstrated that government can basically do what it wants, regardless of what the law says. The GOP has ostensibly stood against that principal as it claimed to be a bulwark built on the voices of the people. But in reality it is anything but. If the GOP is unwilling to go to the mattresses for amnesty, one of the most visceral issues of the day, what are they willing to do for more pedestrian things like reining in the bureaucracy or the welfare state?

If Boehner, McConnell and the GOP establishment continue to act as paper tigers in the fight against government overreach because they fear a 2016 backlash, they should be prepared to for that backlash to become a self fulfilling prophecy as conservatives abandon them in droves. Some will go Libertarian, some will stay home and some will simply jump ship to the Democrats. At the end of the day at least with Democrats voters understand that the law is no roadblock to getting what you want. Why bother voting for the Republican illusion of restraint when they can simply throw their weight behind Democrats and at least sit at the table when the spoils are dispensed?

The Cult of Barack Obama - Eight Questions to Help Identify Members

I’ve never quite gotten the cult of Che Guevara. Colleges across the country are crisscrossed with students wearing Che tee shirts and dorm rooms are decorated with Che posters. Sometimes if you ask the student wearing a Che shirt about him you’ll get a leftist screed worthy of Matt Damon’s bar scene in Good Will Hunting. They’ll talk about his “affinity for the poor”, that he was a doctor, and the fact that he fought against the American Imperialists and “Capitalist octopuses” who were abusing and exploiting the population of South America. Most of the time however they will simply say nonsensical things like “he fought for the oppressed” or he was a “man of the people”.

What you’ll rarely hear them tell you about, though, is Che the Communist, Che the murderer, Che the narcisist, or Che the sadist. You won’t hear them tell you about the thousands of innocent Cubans who were killed arbitrarily at Che’s direction, or by Che’s own hand. They won’t tell you about the economic morass his revolution brought to Cuba. They won’t tell you about the chaos he left in his wake.

Most people wearing Che shirts or sleeping under Che posters know nothing about Che Guevara but they know that he was larger than life and somehow being associated with him makes them cool.

Such is the nature of a cult. Cherry picking facts and ignoring those that damage the image of their idol. In the case of the cult of Che, it’s a pretty innocuous cult. Other than facilitating a hookup that one might regret in the morning or inciting a fisticuff on the student union, there’s not much of an impact on the wider world.

If only we could say the same about the cult of Barack Obama. His cult shares many of the characteristics of the Che cult: The posters. The tee shirts. The celebrity. Mostly though, the cult of Barack Obama shares the characteristic of its adherents knowing practically nothing about their deity. Ask Obama supporters why they like Obama and you’ll get things like “He is for the people” “He supports women’s rights”, “He fixed the healthcare system” or maybe “He got Bin Laden”. All of those points, like most about Obama, are either meaningless or simply wrong.

Being for the people or supporting women’s rights may make for a good sound bite, but they mean nothing in the debate over public policy. Does lowering taxes so that all citizens can take more of their money home count as being for the people? Does promoting a woman’s right to protect herself with a weapon count as supporting women’s rights? And as for Obama getting Bin Laden, a Facebook post recently summed that up nicely: Crediting Obama with killing Bin Laden is like crediting Nixon with landing on the moon.

And even those things they get right on the surface, they get wrong. They will say that unemployment is lower under Barack Obama, which it is, 6.2% today vs. 7.6%. That is true on the surface, but only because 11 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama became president. Those people are not counted in the unemployment rate. Had they been counted the unemployment rate would be over 10% rather than 6.2%. They say he implemented Obamacare. This too is true on its face, but it’s a fundamental lie. Obamacare as it was signed into law has never been implemented. Obama has unlawfully given subsidies to tens of millions of people in conflict with the explicit language of the law. He has unconstitutionally given waivers and delays to tens of thousands of employers employing tens of millions of people so that the pain the law imposes won’t be felt until it’s politically expedient… for him. So, in reality, Obamacare as written has not been implemented, but Americans are nonetheless saddled with a dysfunctional system that has cost jobs and caused many people to lose their doctors, face higher costs and in some cases lose their insurance altogether. 

And the list goes on… The disconnect between reality and the fantasyland members of the cult live in is stark. But how do you know if a friend or loved one is a member of the Cult of Barack Obama? Well, like a mirror used to uncover a vampire, here are eight questions that might help you find out. (And remember, all of this is after Obama borrowed $5 trillion and the FED pumped almost $4 trillion into the economy.)

1) Is American household income higher today than it was when Barack Obama took office? No. Lower, by $2,500.

2) Are more Americans working today than there were when Barack Obama took office? Nominally yes. 146 million vs. 142 million, but as the population has grown by 13 million, a lower percentage of the population is actually working, 45.6% vs. 46.3%

3) Are there fewer Americans living in poverty today than there were when Barack Obama took office? No.  More are. 44 million in 2009 – 14.3% of the population vs. 48 million today, 15% of the population.

4) Are there more or fewer Americans on food stamps today than there were when Barack Obama took office? More. 47 million vs. 34 million.

5) Has the percentage of Americans with health insurance increased since Obamacare passed? No. 83.4% vs. 84.0%.

6) How does Barack Obama’s progressive recovery compare to Ronald Reagan’s free market recovery? Not well: 5.8% total growth over his first 5 years vs. 17.7% for Reagan’s.

7) Is Iraq better off or worse off today than it was when Barack Obama took office? Far worse.

8) Is the world a more stable or friendly place today than it was when Barack Obama took office? Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Venezuela, Honduras…  Not so much.

If, after going through these questions and answers your friend still supports Barack Obama, they are likely part of the cult. Just to be sure however, ask them why they still support him. If they give you logical, cogent reasons for doing so then maybe they’re just confused and there may be some hope for recovery after all. For the rest it might be time Google "intervention".

Unfortunately, while today Che’s cult is largely harmless, Barack’s has wrought a disaster on the American people and the world beyond. Like the objects in the mirror that are larger than they appear, we can only hope that the cult of Obama fizzles soon after he leaves office as the magnitude of his ineptness and his failures becomes clear.