A Senate of Benedict Arnolds...

Benedict Arnold was a well-respected and courageous officer in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He fought in half a dozen battles and was central to winning the critical Battle of Saratoga in 1777, where he suffered a leg injury that sidelined him for the next two years.

They say that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and that appears to apply to legs as well. Over the next two years, Arnold’s inherent victim complex blossomed. Others were, he suggested, getting credit for his actions or getting promoted when he deserved such.

In 1779, Arnold would take a step that would change his life: He married Peggy Shippen, a member of a powerful loyalist family in Philadelphia. Eventually, his jealousy would get the best of him, and he contracted to betray the Americans. By at least as early as July of that year, he was giving the British information on American troop strengths, movements, and munition locations.

George Washington knew none of this and trusted Arnold and put him in charge of West Point in August 1780. One of the most important posts in the country, it was the spot from which the Americans commanded the Hudson River. Less than two weeks after receiving his command, Arnold agreed to a plan, in exchange for $20,000 ($3,500,000 today), to surrender the post to the British in September.

The surrender never occurred, however, because Arnold’s British contact, Major John André, was captured along with the plans for the betrayal. André was hanged, and Arnold escaped to join the British. The British immediately commissioned him as a brigadier general in their army, but most soldiers considered him dishonorable, and many refused to follow him.

Following the war, Arnold would spend most of the rest of his life in London, where the king liked him, but many British citizens and military men despised him. In America, his name has become synonymous with treachery.

Although Arnold’s ultimate plan never came to fruition, had it done so, it could have changed the outcome of the war. Washington said of the plan that “Such an event must have given the American cause a dangerous, if not a fatal wound.”

And that is the crux of why betrayal is so dangerous. It’s one thing to understand that your enemy seeks your destruction. It’s another thing altogether when one of your own, one upon whom you’re counting on to man the ramparts, turns and lets the enemy in. It might not be fatal to your endeavor, but it could be and most certainly will endanger the mission.

Sylvester Stallone recently called Donald Trump the new George Washington. That’s not quite true, but like Washington, Trump is trying to carve out of an enemy-infested wilderness a great nation seeking freedom and prosperity. Also, like Washington, Trump is faced with numerous people who are theoretically on his side while, in reality, aligning with the enemy.

And who is this enemy? The Swamp. The Borg. Basically, the government that controls virtually every element of American life, from baby formula to school curriculum to college funding to healthcare to retirement, not to mention banking and justice and speech…if you object.

Ostensibly, Trump should have a mandate given that he won the popular vote and the Electoral College, gave the GOP a Senate majority, and kept the majority in the House. The first test of that mandate came recently and it didn’t go particularly well.

In the Senate, with Mitch McConnell leaving his leadership role, there were three competitors to replace him: Rick Scott of Florida, John Thune of South Dakota, and John Cornyn of Texas. Hardcore MAGA firebrand Mike Lee or bomb-thrower Rand Paul weren’t even considered. Of the three considered, two are virtual Democrats, with the Conservative Review giving Cornyn a Liberty Score of 54% and Thune an abysmal 51%, while Scott scored a respectable 86%.

Both Cornyn and Thune are, at their core anti-Trump, while Scott has been a staunch supporter of the president. Thune, who said after January 6, “What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” is seen as K Street’s favorite and endorsed Tim Scott in the GOP primary. In 2016, the immigration dove and gun control fan Cornyn ridiculed Trump’s border wall, was booed at the Texas GOP convention in 2022, and, in 2023 said Trump couldn’t win as his time had passed.

In a shameful last act, McConnell set a secret vote, and Thune came out on top. The fact that the Senate GOP dispatched an aggressively MAGA leader and instead elected someone who’s basically a Democrat tells you that Senate GOPers don’t care about what the American people are looking for.

What’s more, at the same time, in a closely split Senate, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz withdrew after it became clear there would not be 50 Republicans to confirmed. 

The Swamp, of course, is not just the Senate. With Trump’s picks of Pete Hegseth for Defense, RFK Jr. for HHS, Tuli Gabbard for DNI, and Tom Homan as Border Czar, larger Washington is reacting with horror and fear. Employees at HHS are threatening to quit, Justice Department lawyers are lawyering up and “freaking out“ while DoD employees are “alarmed“ and governors are promising not to assist in deportations.

But those fears, which are exactly what are necessary to begin trimming the bloat from government, only exist because of Trump’s picks, and those picks (and Trump) will only succeed if the Senate approves his nominees. And that’s a problem.

During his first term, Trump’s picks were approved at a rate far slower than Obama’s or Bush’s. With a McConnell clone running the Senate, there’s concern of a repeat. While the Senate is by design supposed to be a check on the tyranny of the masses, it’s rare that a president must battle his own party to do his job.

Obama had a similar mandate in 2008, and Democrats gave him everything he wanted and more. But Democrats are a core part of the Swamp while Trump is seeking to battle it.

And there’s the rub…

Democrats are the Swamp, and so too is the bureaucracy. But sadly, much of the GOP is, as well.

Trump has his work cut out for him in this uphill battle he’s taken on. But if there’s anything to be gleaned from his picks so far, it’s that, unlike in 2016, this time he knows what he’s up against and is planning to take the fight to the Swamp with bare fists and brass knuckles if necessary, and it will be.

If Trump continues to assemble a team more interested in solving America’s problems than in being feted by the elites, he just might triumph over the Benedict Arnolds who populate the establishment GOP, those whose primary goal in life seems to be to go along to get along, accumulating ever more power and money along the way.

 

The Swamp fears Donald Trump, With Good Reason

As we all know, Democrats and the Swamp hate Donald Trump.  They probably hate him more than any president ever.  Those elites, including celebrities, journalists and politicians used to love Trump, with thousands of them smiling and taking pictures of him over the years. But not anymore.

All of that changed in 2015 when he decided to run for president.  It wasn't that he was running for president that made him enemy number one, but rather because he was running for president as a Republican.

But of course being a Republican wasn’t always the polarizing factor that it became in 2015 and beyond.  Sure, the media disliked Bush and McCain and Romney, but they were OK because they were all within the acceptable limits of what could be tolerated and controlled.  Trump was and is something altogether different. 

To understand why he was and is different, look at the people at the heart of the Swamp, the government.

Nancy Pelosi, is 84 years old with 47 years in politics & government, a Political Science major with no experience in the private sector.

Chuck Schumer, 74 years old, 49 years in government, a lawyer with no private sector experience.

Hakeem Jeffries, 54 years old, 17 years in govt. A lawyer with no private sector experience.

Joe Biden, 82 years old, 50 years in government, a lawyer with zero private sector experience.

Bernie Sanders, 83 years old, 53 of which were in politics and government, a Political Science major who held a smattering of odd jobs prior to joining government.

Adam Schiff, a 64 year old lawyer who’s spent 38 years in government with zero private sector experience.

Pete Buttigieg, 42 years old, 12 years in government, a Political Science major who spent 3 years working for consulting giant McKinsey & Co. mostly working with NGOs and corporations.  He was in the Navy and did a stint in Afghanistan.

AOC is a 35 year old Econ and International Relations major who’s spent 8 years in government and whose private sector experience is that of a bartender.

Gavin Newsom, a 57 year old Political Science major who’s spent 27 years in government and who in 1992 was brought in by his friend, Gordon Getty, as the co-founder of PlumpJack Winery in Napa, California.   

Elizabeth Warren, a 75 year old lawyer who’s spent 30 years in government and has zero private sector experience.

And it’s not just Democrats…

Mitch McConnell is an 82 year old lawyer who’s spent 50 years in government and never held a private sector job.

Kevin McCarthy is a 59 year old MBA who worked in government for 37 years and sold sandwiches out of his uncle’s yogurt shop while in college.

Paul Ryan is a 54 year old Political Science and Economics graduate who spent 28 years in government before retiring to become a lobbyist in 2019.  He was a waiter and fitness trainer in college.

So there you have it, of the dozen or so most powerful people in American government & politics, only one has any real experience in running a business (Newsom) and that business was funded by one of the richest men in the world at the time.  But somehow they’re the ones making the laws that increasingly impact the businesses that employ every American, and indeed the lives and communities of every single American.   

For these people, government is virtually everything in life.  For most of them, they know nothing about the private sector, the thing that powers America.  They know nothing about running a business, creating jobs, meeting payroll, and perhaps most importantly, doing all of those things while risking everything and while trying to abide by a stultifying labyrinth of ever changing government regulations from an endless array of agencies. 

None of them, aside from Newsom, has built anything of any consequence.  They have no experience of what it’s like to be in business, where 86% of employed Americans work, run a business or be an entrepreneur, the economic fount of America. For most of their adult lives none of them had to worry about the solvency of their next paycheck. Their healthcare plans and those of their families and their employee’s families weren’t resting on their success.  They’ve not had to worry about selling enough products or services in order to keep the lights on, the employees’ paid and fresh product on the shelves or services in the pipeline.  Worrying about and conquering those pressures are what created America’s prosperity. Those are the things that fund the paychecks Americans pay taxes out of that the government turns around and redistributes.  Those are the things that make most Americans’ lives better than those of almost every person in human history. It’s those things, not government…and the people arrayed against Donald Trump have virtually no experience with any of it.

But Trump, he has it in spades.  He’s built giant hotels in the midst of economic turmoil.  He’s done so having to deal with unions, mafia, government regulators, contractors, competitors, bankers and more.  He’s built hotels, golf courses, casinos, apartment buildings, communities and more around the world.  He owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.  He was a founding member of the USFL, a competitor to the NFL.  He was the star and producer of the Apprentice, the business focused reality show that averaged 14 million viewers per episode for its first six years.  Sure, Trump’s had failures, bankruptcies and lots of lawsuits, but you don’t accomplish anything without risking those outcomes.  He’s failed plenty of times, but he’s succeeded far more often.  He’s created companies that have made millions of paycheck deadlines, that have fed tens of thousands of families and have generated billions of dollars in revenue. 

Donald Trump accomplishes things.  Not only without government, but usually in spite of government.  Maybe the best example of this is his renovation of Wollman Rink, a project that had languished for six years in the hands of the NYC government, who wasted $13 million working unsuccessfully on the project.  Trump completed it in a matter of months, and under budget. And that’s what scares them the most. The Swamp cannot afford to let Donald Trump, on the world’s biggest stage, show Americans that they don’t need government to succeed, that problems can be solved without government “help” and to demonstrate that many times, government is actually the problem. If you’re in the government business, that’s a bad thing because as anyone who’s ever picked up a history book knows, Americans, when unshackled from government regulation, can do extraordinary things. And once they’re reminded of that, all bets are off. 

The last time Trump was president he said he was going to drain the Swamp.  He didn’t. The truth is, he had no idea how deep or wide the Swamp was and is. Most of us didn’t.  Now he does and now we do.  This time he’ll be under no illusions about what he’s up against, and ideally, will act accordingly.  The Swamp knows that. They see the writing on the wall. And it terrifies them.

Is Donald Trump 2024 Worth The Fight?

Donald Trump was a great, if imperfect president.  By the third year of his presidency the country was flourishing.  The economy was roaring, jobs were up, incomes were up, gas prices were down and America & Americans were doing fairly well. 

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election.  The swamp struck back via Covid and the George Floyd protests.  Neither of those was of Trump’s making, but both were utilized by Democrats to steal the election. The Democrats didn’t create Covid or put Floyd in the morgue, but they used the lockdowns and the riots to sufficiently upend American life that they could steal the election under the cover of chaos. 

Those were tests and Donald Trump failed.  With Covid he allowed the country to be misled by a snake oil salesman and with the Floyd protests he didn’t send in the troops.  It’s easy to understand why he failed, however.  Anthony Fauci had been playing a role in America’s various health crises for decades and was an internationally respected doctor.  As the media was hyping the idea that the virus could wipe out mankind, Fauci was a voice of calm, reassuring the country that with distance, masks and lockdowns we would persevere.  At the same time, when Trump raised questions about anything that diverged from the Big Pharma / media narrative or suggested we should remember the economic costs of lockdowns, he was attacked, lampooned, and vilified unmercifully.  Given the fusillade facing him, it’s not a surprise Trump couldn’t recognize the lies the American people were being served.

On the George Floyd inspired Antifa / BLM riots, Trump failed, and that’s on him, although again, one can see why he acted the way he did. Section 252 of the Insurrection Act “permits deployment (of military troops) in order to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.””  Essentially he could have utilized the military to stop the violence that cities were unwilling or unable to stop.  Trump knew this, saying in early June 2020:  "If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."  He was pilloried by Democrats for even bringing up the idea with Pelosi stating: "But there is no reason for the U.S. military to be called out for this." 

Trump chose not to likely because he knew Democrats would brand him a tyrant or dictator if he did, despite the fact that FDR, Kennedy, LBJ & Bush 41 used troops for far smaller riots. Democrats did so regardless. 

That Donald Trump failed at leading the country through those two disasters is sadly, understandable.  Given the savagery and breadth of the relentless attacks on him, it would have taken someone just short of Zeus to have succeeded. The result of that failure was the theft of the election and the end of his presidency. 

Fast forward two years.  In November Trump announced he was running and he said many of the right things, starting with "In order to make America great and glorious again. I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”  Possibly the best line of the night was "But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice. The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that.” 

That all sounds great, but the question is:  Has Trump learned the hard lesson… that the swamp is the Terminator, it will not stop, it cannot be negotiated with, the swamp knows no parties or limits and it must be crushed, otherwise it will kill him, kill his supporters and kill the Republic of the United States?

Recent events seem to suggest that he has not.

First, he endorsed Dr. Oz over a rock solid MAGA candidate in Pennsylvania.  Oz was anything but MAGA and went on to lose to a literally brain damaged Democrat. Trump made other MAGA endorsements, but Pennsylvania’s one of the most important swing states in the nation and he blew it.

Next, in December he endorsed the decidedly not MAGA Kevin McCarthy for Speaker despite the fact that there were a variety of MAGA candidates in the running.  McCarthy in 2021 stated "I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election." That’s true, except for virtually every single MAGA voter in America, and 70% of the larger GOP as well.

Then later he threw his most ardent supporters, the pro life movement, under the bus, stating "It was the "abortion issue," poorly handled by many Republicans…that lost large numbers of Voters." He continued "Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again." That was completely unnecessary, and wrong to boot. Next he quizzically invited the biggest dolt in Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham, who actually proposed a nationwide abortion ban less than two months before the election, to be with him on his first campaign event!  Most Republicans despise the war monger and big spending Graham, behind only McConnell and perhaps Collins, Murray & Romney. 

Then, finally, despite six years of failure, he supported the grifter Ronna McDaniel to lead the Republican Party over the incomparable super lawyer and MAGA candidate Harmeet Dhillon.  If there was ever anyone in the Republican Party who should’ve been ousted, who should’ve been replaced by a dyed in the wool grass roots MAGA candidate, it was McDaniel. She spent over $2 million of party money on luxury travel and private jets, $300,000 on flowers, $75,000 on “beauty and spa treatments” and $1,280 on LBGTQ+ filings! All while undermining MAGA.  She is the antithesis of the grass roots, MAGA voter.  She is the polar opposite of the farmers and plumbers and police and truckers and steel workers who put Trump into office in the first place and the ones who recognized the coup.  They’re the 50,000 people who filled stadiums and were in the trenches with him.  But McDaniel and the establishment loathe them.    

If Trump circa 2024 hasn’t figured out that success lays with the grass roots MAGA voters who put him in the White House rather than the establishment grifters who lead the party today – with his help – then I’m not sure what the motivation is to support him is. And just in case anyone is under the illusion that this is written by some Never Trumper, let me dissuade you of that notion.  In November, before most of the above occurred, I wrote this:  "Trump may tell off-color jokes and may not always be the best judge of character, but he can take the heat, and his North Star has always been prosperity and security for the American people. Given the literal evil the Democrats are seeking to impose on America, I’ll happily follow him into the fire."

2024 is too important a moment in American history to let serial failures like the establishment McFailures McConnell, McCarthy and McDaniel lead the way.  This election may well be the last opportunity for Americans to rescue the nation from a Democrat party that has turned our cities into dystopian wastelands, turned 40% of American children into gender confused lab rats and seeks to balkanize the nation based on race and sex and anything else they can think of.  The goal of the swamp is power and it knows no party.  McDaniel & Co. are its GOP arm and if Trump doesn’t recognize that then the baggage that comes with supporting him isn’t worth the fight because with those charlatans leading the way, come Jan 20, 2025 there will be another Democrat being sworn in.

The Cowardly GOP Grifters - Feigning Leadership and Losing America

Last week Tucker Carlson showcased the fact that the GOP is doing its best to lose November’s election.

He showed a clip of the Mitch McConnell admitting that the GOP would likely not take the Senate. McConnell and the rest of leadership don’t want to win. Carlson rightly suggested if the GOP really wanted to win, they’d run on crime and immigration.  While the economy is reportedly voter’s number one issue, in reality it’s what goes on in their neighborhoods and on their streets that matter.  If Americans don’t feel safe walking down their streets or in their homes or if they sit in the drive-thru lines because they’re scared to go into a restaurant or store, nothing else matters… not the economy, abortion, gender rights, or Ukraine. 

But the GOP doesn’t care.  They’re complaining about Biden’s spending, bemoaning government overreach and sanctioning Putin. Those issues aren’t going to return the GOP to power.  But Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and Ronna McDaniel don’t care about returning to power.  Their lives don’t change if the GOP doesn’t take back the Congress. They’ll still rule their little fiefdoms, still be invited to Georgetown cocktail parties and be feted by lobbyists, and of course they’ll still be on Sunday morning shows to feign outrage for the latest Democrat policy.

For these grifters the only difference between winning and losing in November is having to actually work for the American people… something they’re loathe to do.

But for the average American, the difference between winning and losing in November is literally life and death, lawlessness or civil society.

The world wouldn’t change overnight on the 8^th, but what could happen is that the people who control the purse strings, who are supposed to actually make the laws could change. Just like in 1994.

And that’s a big deal because the people running America today are the same people who have been running America’s biggest cities into the ground for decades.  And every American, whether they live in the San Francisco, Manhattan or Kalamazoo, MI recognizes that America’s coming apart at the seams.  From not being able to go a day without seeing another video of a pack of thugs beating a cab driver in the street or attacking an employee in a restaurant to watching a seemingly endless parade of homeless people punching random strangers, Americans are weary.  From staring with disbelief as a gang of hoodlums ransack a convenience store with impunity to watching video after video of people cussing at or otherwise attacking the police, Americans are watching the collapse of our society.

And this is the environment where Mitch McConnell whines about the quality of the GOP candidates.  The problem isn’t Dr. Oz or Eric Schmitt or Herschel Walker, it’s that the GOP leadership that is not doing its job. Where is Newt Gingrich when we need him?  The reality is, this election has been tailor made for the GOP, but that’s not the way it’s shaping up because McConnell, McCarthy, McDaniel and their puppeteer, the hack Frank Luntz – who happens to be McCarthy’s roommate or landlord or whatever – have decided they don’t want to actually save America, they’d rather sit back in the comfort of their minority position and pretend to care while enjoying the perks of “leadership”.

America needs warriors willing to brave the slings and arrows of the chattering classes, the leftist media, the Washington establishment and, most of all, the fascist NGO influencers who employ mobs on the streets to intimidate citizens and spineless CEOs and coerce into submission anyone who doesn’t agree with their agendas. 

If the GOP really wanted to win in November, we’d see a new ad every single day showcasing the violence going on in our streets along with pictures of some thug who’s just assaulted a random senior as he’s released without bail by a George Soros funded district attorney.  We’d see videos of illegals storming the border.  At the end of every single ad would be a simple tagline:  “If you want more of this, please vote for my Democrat opponent...  If you want someone who’s going to do something about crime and the quality of American life, vote for me.” (Helpfully I've created the nearby video to give him an idea of what it might look like... )

It’s that simple.  There are myriad problems caused by the Democrats, but those issues can’t be addressed without majorities, and none of them will flip Congress in November. But images of blood in the streets will.  A daily total of national Fentanyl deaths will.  Images of career criminals released on bail after having pummeled some teenager into unconsciousness will, and stories of illegal immigrants overwhelming communities will.  Imagine if Dr. Oz ran daily ads with videos showcasing Philadelphia’s violence rather than his clownish grocery store disaster?  No one in Pennsylvania cares about the price of guacamole, but they care about getting shot or stabbed in their own neighborhoods.

Not that I expect the GOP leadership to create such a Contract with America Deux. They’re cowards and grifters.  Such a campaign would require backbone against the predictable cries of “racism” that would emerge because most of the videos involve young black hoodlums and thugs. They would be branded racists by the race pimps and the professional victimization industry. 

Those attacks would come as surely as night follows day.  But so what?  It just happens to be the case that most of the crimes we see involve black perps freed from the justice system in the name of “equity”.  If there are similar videos of white perps they should be shown too.  The reality is, if you’re a victim of murder or rape it doesn’t matter what the criminal looks like.  Is a dead black child any more or less dead because his attacker was black or white?  No. Crime is off the charts not because the pigment of anyone’s skin, but because of the policies of the Democrat party. 

The GOP needs to understand their constituency is not the criminal class of any race.  Their constituency is the average American of every race.  It’s Americans who want to send their kids to school without them having to step over junkies or human feces.  It’s the average American who wants to go to work without fearing getting shot or robbed before making it home. 

The rule of law and responsibility for one’s actions are foundations of a civilized society. Without them there is no civilized society. That’s what we’re experiencing with Democrats in charge, and it seems like the GOP leadership is OK with that. We, however, are not.  This is the hill to die on, this is hill upon which America will either recover or slide into the abyss of chaos and tyranny…

We cannot depend on the current GOP “leaders” to fight this fight. This is going to have to come from the candidates themselves and some new Gingrich character to nationalize this election and help push the feckless GOP across the finish line. McConnell may not be capable of actually leading the country out of this morass, but at least with a GOP majority in November the collapse into a dystopian nightmare can be slowed until people of character can replace him. But being in the majority is the first step, and that will take candidates with the courage to stand up and fight for the average American, regardless of the invective that would surely be headed their way…

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?