The People's House... A Historic Opportunity To Lead Should Not Be Squandered On A Squish

First there was Eric Cantor. Then there was John Boehner. Now there’s Kevin McCarthy. But somehow conservatives are once again being encouraged to grab defeat out of the hands of victory. This time by electing amnesty advocate Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House.

We’ve been told the House is dysfunctional. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is exactly how the House is supposed to operate. When someone doesn’t have the confidence of his party and they are in the majority, he should be shown the door. But we’re told that a group of right wing Tea Party types are somehow keeping the people’s representatives from governing. If only that were only true! If it were, Obamacare wouldn’t be funded. It is. Barack Obama’s amnesty wouldn’t be funded. It is. The debt ceiling wouldn’t have been raised like a helium balloon. It was. Unfortunately, the conservatives in the House have had little success stopping the big government policies of Barack Obama, the Democrats and the GOP establishment.

So, now, today, after the three highest members of the House GOP establishment are either out the door or on their way out, members are being encouraged to put a guy who is 100% establishment, Paul Ryan, in charge.

Not only should they ignore pleas to put Ryan in charge of the House, they should select a real conservative from the Freedom Caucus like Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows. In addition, they should immediately call for a Motion to Vacate the Chair and stop Boehner from doing… pretty much anything.

Of course we hear the gnashing of the teeth from the usual quarters of the establishment telling us that this is a disaster for the GOP… that a fight over Planned Parenthood, a fight over the debt ceiling, a fight over the Continuing Resolution will be suicidal for the GOP if they end up in a stalemate that ends up “shutting down the government.” Frankly, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Two years ago we heard the same thing when Ted Cruz shut down the Senate as he fought to defund Obamacare. We were told that the GOP would be blamed for the government shutdown – which, sadly, is nothing even close to a shutdown as 83% of the government still operated normally – and would likely lose all chances to take the Senate and would probably lose the House to boot. Then when the election finally came a funny thing happened… the GOP picked up seats in both houses and picked up the Senate in an historic win.

In 2010 the GOP picked up the House telling the country it would stop Obamacare. Led by the establishment, it didn’t. In 2014 the GOP picked up the Senate telling the American people it would stop Obama’s illegal amnesty. Once again the squishes in the middle buckled. The only reason the House is in turmoil today is because enough Americans voted to stop Barack Obama that something called the Freedom Caucus exists to throw it into that turmoil.

As I quoted Jim Dint saying in 2010 when I wrote in support of Christine O’Donnell for the Senate from Delaware over the despicable squish Mike Castle, “I’d rather lose fighting for the right cause than win fighting for the wrong cause.” What’s the point of winning if the guys you elect do exactly the same things the guys you voted against would have done? The voters have had enough of GOP squishes… as was demonstrated by Mitt Romney’s dismal performance at the polls in 2012. They want leadership that is willing to stand up and say they will fight Barack Obama’s leftist agenda, and then actually do so. Fight on the killing of babies in the womb? Bring it on. Fight to stop empowering government largesse via another debt ceiling increase? Absolutely. Fight to stop the drive to turn the country into a third world banana republic via open borders? When do we start?

In 2010 and 2014 Americans showed the GOP they were willing to support a fight to when they sent Representatives and Senators to Washington who had indeed promised to fight the progressive cancer that has taken over Washington. Once again, once in power however, the party demurred from the fight.  The GOP establishment types were more interested in the perks of office, their privileges in Washington, making sure big donors were happy than actually accomplishing what voters had sent them to Washington to do.  That's the reason the GOP brand is so damaged, not "dysfunction".

We are in a unique moment in American history and for once the GOP has the opportunity to show real leadership when it really counts… i.e. in the run-up to the most important election in a generation. Not only should they not make Paul Ryan or any other amnesty loving establishment squish Speaker, they should find the most vocal, passionate conservative voice they can and proudly follow him as he leads a national debate on whether the future of America is one of prosperity driven by free markets and limited government or malaise and decline driven by government spending and regulation.  In the unlikely event they lose, so be it.  If a prosperous America is to be replaced by a third world banana republic, let freedom's death come after a full-throated defense of liberty rather than following a faux battle where party leaders put on a show for the little people but share cigars and whiskey in the halls of Congress as they divvy up the spoils of power.  

Now is exactly the time for such a full-throated fight, and appropriately enough history has put the People’s House on center stage. The question is, does the GOP have the courage to actually lead in a fight when it counts or would they rather play a paper tiger as Barack Obama sets fire to the United States Constitution?

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?

Will the Constitution Survive King Barack the Transformer?

What makes a tyrant? Dictionary.com defines tyrant thus: A sovereign or other ruler who uses power oppressively or unjustly.

In 1776 the 13 American colonies declared independence from just such a tyrant. Eleven years later the same 13 states came together to write a Constitution that was specifically crafted to thwart the emergence of a new tyrant. The laws were to be written in Congress, where discussion, debate and competing factions would keep them from consistently favoring one constituency over another. In turn those laws were to be executed by the President whose constituency was the whole country. That separation of powers and duties has been the key to keeping the United States as a free, democratic republic without a tyrant for over two centuries.

Tyrants rarely adhere to constraints on their power being imposed by anyone or anything, Constitutions included. If they did, they wouldn’t be a tyrant in the first place. At the same time they often don’t brook the slings and arrows of enemies very well either. After all, what self respecting tyrant can allow subjects to feel free to criticize him? Tyrants also often seek to hide what they are doing. Whether it’s a war against someone who has something the tyrant covets or the implementation of a controversial new law, tyrants often choose to obscure the truth of their desires in order to gain the acceptance and acquiescence of their subjects rather than tell them the truth and deal with possible rebellion. Basically tyrants usually do exactly what they want, regardless of what anyone else thinks… but sometimes they feel compelled to lie about it.

Barack Obama seems to have excelled in all of these areas of Tyranny 101. In the first place he sees little constraint on his power. The endless waivers, delays and changes to Obamacare are easily the most impactful example of Obama’s disregard for the Constitution’s direction that Congress writes the laws. Follow that with his “Executive Order” on immigration essentially providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and it removes any sheen of Constitutionality. Indeed, Barack Obama is on record 22 times having said he didn’t have the Constitutional authority order amnesty. But he went ahead and did it anyway.

Obama also shines in his treatment of his enemies. This week proof emerged that the administration worked to spike stories by Sharyl Attkisson that were critical of its handling of the Fast and Furious program. Not content with just getting stories spiked, the administration also decided to selectively criminalize the practice of journalism itself when it named Fox News journalist James Rosen as a possible ''co-conspirator'' in a criminal investigation of a news leak. Add to that the IRS’s intimidation of Tea Party groups and anyone who’s just a bit critical of the tyrant president might just want to start checking under their beds and in their closets before they go to sleep at night…

Then there is the lying and obfuscation. The last couple of weeks have been chock full videos popping up of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber telling audiences that the lack of transparency in the bill was critical to its passage, because if Americans knew its real costs it would never pass. So rather than tell the American people exactly what Obamacre would do, Barack Obama simply lied to them, reassured by Jonathan Gruber that the citizens were simply too stupid to pick up on it.

Tyrants rarely come to power telling everyone they are planning on ruling as a tyrant, particularly in ostensibly free nations. Instead they usually come to power by making grand promises of reward to a sufficient enough number of voters that they are welcomed through the front door. Once in power however, they begin to scheme and manipulate the levers of power so that they can accomplish their goals, regardless of the rules and regardless of any opposition. Indeed, they transform their perch from that of a servant of the people to a that of a ruler of the people. That is exactly what Barack Obama has done… and it’s only become more blatant the longer he’s been in office. With his amnesty move, coming so close after a decisive vote for the opposition, he’s finally demonstrated with unvarnished clarity exactly what he thinks of American voters and the American Constitution. The Constitution has been strong enough to whether crisis’s before. The paper itself is fragile but the ideas behind it have been extraordinarily resilient. Let’s hope both are strong enough to survive the reign of King Barack the Transformer.

Barack Obama's Amnesty won't be legal, but it will likely be permanent...

Sometime over the course of the next week Barack Obama is likely going grant amnesty to millions of people who are in the United States illegally.

He’s doing this very much against the will of an overwhelming majority of American people. Not only do polls show that Americans are 3 to 1 against his giving amnesty to illegals, but his party, which very much supports his position, just got shellacked in voting booths across the country, at every level. Nonetheless, Barack Obama plans to do it anyway, because he feels he’s right… and because he can.

Technically he can’t really grant permanent amnesty because that would require the law to be changed. He’ll probably use his prosecutorial discretion to simply tell them that – at least while he’s president – they need not fear deportation. He’ll likely accomplish that by telling the DHS to basically look the other way and not deport those who are here illegally, depending on who they are, when they arrived, whether or not they have kids, etc. While as the chief executive of the government, he does indeed have the Constitutional power to tell agencies how they should act within the law, he does not have the power (legally) to tell them to close their eyes and arbitrarily ignore the law. Which is likely exactly what he’s going to do.

This action presents a variety of dilemmas. The first is the fact that Congress, not the President, writes the laws. (Although as demonstrated dozens of times with Obamacare, Barack Obama either doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care about it.) For Congress, there is only one Constitutional remedy available to them: Impeachment. When Obama grants Amnesty to 5 million people next week, he will almost certainly have committed an impeachable offense. This however is likely to be a bridge too far for most in Congress. The result will be that for the next two years millions of illegals will come out from the shadows, will buy houses, get jobs, get married and begin living their lives as if they were in the United States legally. Which brings up the second dilemma.

In 2017, when a GOP president takes office he won’t be able to simply reverse Barack Obama’s Executive Order, as presidents regularly do when they disagree with the policies of their predecessors. While he’ll have the legal authority to do so, the Democrats and their media lapdogs will ensure that every newscast in America is filled with stories of downtrodden immigrants who have spent the last two years building a life founded on the American dream and how any politician who seeks to send him back home to Mexico or Guatemala is simply a racist. I would doubt there are many in the GOP who have the stones to stand up to such withering attacks and defend the Constitution… although I think Ted Cruz probably does.  Such is the spineless GOP... Even now, on the heels of one of the GOP's biggest victories in decades and at a time when Americans 75% against amnesty, soon to be Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already capitulated on the option of a government shutdown to address the president's overreach. 

Theoretically Congress does have one other avenue available through which it can pursue a remedy: the courts. This however is a very iffy proposition. The federal court system is extraordinarily slow, and given that Congress has impeachment as an option, the likelihood of the Supreme Court getting involved is rather thin. In addition, a split decision on the case (unlike US v. Nixon) declaring the Executive Order illegal would simply cause Obama to reword it and issue another.

Most despairingly for those who value the Constitution and the nation, Obama’s amnesty will likely have the impact of opening the floodgates of immigrants from Latin America. Already the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are reported to believe that Joe Biden has laid out the welcome mat for their citizens seeking to emigrate to the United States. In 1986 Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 2.5 million illegal aliens and the result was 20 million more crossing the border over the next three decades. In 2014, when Latin America is the home of 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world – including the 18 top spots, how many millions will follow after Barack Obama’s amnesty next week?

Finally, the dilemmas are not reserved for the GOP. If Barack Obama is allowed to blatantly ignore the law and simply choose not to enforce it, what will the next president be free to do? What if a GOP president directs the IRS to not collect capital gains taxes or estate taxes? What if a GOP president directs HHS to stop direct deposit of welfare checks, forcing those on welfare to stand in line at a government office to pick up their checks? What if a GOP president decides to stop enforcing civil rights legislation that he thinks is outdated? If Democrats have no problem with Barack Obama rewriting Obamacare or immigration law to suit his own needs, they will be hard pressed to not be seen as hypocrites when a GOP president chooses to do the same when he targets their golden calves. At that point we cease to be a nation of laws and become a nation of men, the exact thing our Constitution was established to prevent.

The United States has survived as a representative democracy for 225 years because presidents understood that they were not kings. Even presidents who might have thought they were, such as Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, in the end demurred to the Constitution when the chips were down. Barack Obama on the other hand has decided that even in the face of a blistering defeat he is going to implement his policies, Constitution be dammed. Let’s hope the next part of the Constitution he decides to ignore isn’t the 22nd Amendment.