“‘We have people across this country who are scared to death,’ New Jersey governor Chris Christie declared loudly at this week’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas. Virtually the entire debate was based upon this premise. Which is understandable. Since the bloody Islamist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, terrorism has shot up as the chief concern for most Americans, particularly Republican voters.
…Only 34 percent approve of President Obama’s handling of the Islamic State, according to the poll, and more Americans are worried about terrorism than at any time since the aftermath of 9/11. This abrupt change in the climate explains why Hillary Clinton is suddenly talking much tougher about terrorism and why the president is keen to get some good national-security photo ops in before he leaves for vacation. But I can’t shake the sense that the polls, politicians, and my fellow pundits are mistaking a symptom for the disease.
…One common explanation for the anxious age we are in is that the economy is undergoing a profound transformation that is leaving a lot of people on the sidelines. It seems obvious to me there’s a lot of merit to this explanation. But I don’t think that economics explains everything.Seventy percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Many of those people are doing just fine economically.
No, I think the missing piece of the puzzle is the fact that Americans — on the left and the right — think that the folks running the country have an agenda different from theirs…Let’s go back to where we started. Christie says, “We have people across this country who are scared to death.” No doubt that’s true.
But for a great many of them, I suspect, the fear is not so much a fear of the Islamic State but a fear that our own government, starting with the president, just doesn’t take terrorism seriously. We now know he was very late in taking the Islamic State seriously.
…But the president himself is a symptom. The whole system seems to have lost its mind. That there’s even a debate about whether security officials should be allowed to look at the social-media posts of immigrants is a sign that our bureaucrats have such open minds their brains have fallen out. We should have seen this coming five years ago, when we learned that Obama told the new head of NASA to make one of his top priorities outreach to the Muslim world.
Terrorism is a big concern, but this sense that the political system is unresponsive, unaccountable, and operating on its own self-interested ideological agenda is bigger…The failure of credible politicians to address this anxiety created an opportunity for Donald Trump.At least he’s willing to say Washington is stupid.
As Goldberg went on to note in a subsequent commentary:
“Anyway, my point is that the people running the government, the bureaucracy, higher education, much of the media, etc. seem to have turned their backs on the very idea of America as a nation. The ideology of transnational progressives occasionally lines up with American self-interest, but that alignment is more accidental and — in their minds — regrettable than anything else.“
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, reporting on Paul Ryan’s first real test as Speaker, CNNgleefully trumpeted…
“Obama called Ryan after the vote to thank him “for helping government work,” the speaker said. The president also invited Ryan to join him for a meal at the White House in the new year. (After all, sucking up to this Socialist Satan did wonders…
…for Little Boy and Fat Man!)
Kansas GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told CNN he believes Republicans wanted to give Ryan a fresh start. The vote is not “a function of the spending bill but … a courtesy to the new speaker,” said Huelskamp, who voted against the bill.
He warned that Republicans who supported the measure will get grief from constituents when they go home. Huelskamp also argued the bill is a “Christmas present to Donald Trump” because it represents another example of the Republican establishment cutting deals with Democrats.“
…while the Washington Examiner observed…
“Senate Democrats on Friday boasted that they successfully managed to get just about everything they wanted in a massive spending and tax cut bill, despite being the minority party in both the House and Senate.
“Months ago, Democrats called on Republicans to work with us to craft a budget agreement. We wanted to get rid of sequestration, we were able to do that,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “We wanted to make sure there is parity between defense and the middle class, we wanted to make sure that we kept these poison pills off the legislation.”
“All three goals we had, we accomplished,” he said. Reid said Democrats were able to beat back GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and stop plans to tighten rules for accepting refugees. Even the lone GOP victory, ending the ban on U.S. oil exports, was matched by the extension of green energy tax credits.“
As stated on Friday, we’re with Tim Huelskamp and Dave Brat; i.e., we’re of a mind to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt…for one more year! After that, should a Republican win the White House next November, Speaker Ryan will have NO EXCUSE for not acting on every single Conservative measure, regardless of who controls the Senate. And if, come January 2017, Hillary’s despoiling the Oval Office with her oversized ass, Ryan’s duty to the Republic will compel him to shut down the government rather than countenance her brand of Communism.
Unfortunately for Republicans, as Richard Fernandez writes at PJ Media., more and more with every passing day Washington, D.C. resembles another notable cesspool of corruption and cronyism:
“In most political morality tales a band of courageous reformers take on a corrupt city hall and — for a while at least — triumph until an evil human nature reasserts itself. But in actuality the impetus for moderating political excess often comes from the elites themselves when mismanagement finally becomes so bad it threatens the survival of everyone.
Until things reach the point of failure, mismanagement has the effect of leaving voters no alternative but content themselves with the opposition party. Republican voters may have been disappointed and outraged at the perceived sellout by a Paul Ryan-led Congress to the Obama administration. “It was another Republican “compromise” meaning Democrats got every item they asked for,” said the Drudge Report. The left leaning Slate crowed “the new speaker’s first big deal is just like all of the ones that infuriated conservatives under Boehner. … In other words, it’s a compromise, something Democrats usually accept as part of the process while Republicans scream bloody murder.”
But what were the Republican voters going to do? Vote for Hillary Clinton? While the money lasts voter outrage has remarkably little effect on the political elites. They may stand with their fists balled and teeth clenched but the system serenely goes on and on.
Corruption — or “compromise” if you prefer that word — is what Terry Golway, who served on the editorial board of the New York Times called “modern American politics”. In a book titled Machine Made, he argues that Tammany Hall was a key innovation in governance and under the leadership of Boss Tweed functioned as a dispenser of social justice to Irish immigrants.
Sound at all familiar on a more national scale?!?
…In 2011 Fred Siegel drew parallels between the modern Federal Government and the storied 19th century political machine, arguing that Washington was the 21st century reincarnation of Tammany Hall; an organization which existed only to pay itself, an arrangement maintained by public sector unions:
The Great Society put the state on growth hormones. Less widely appreciated, the era gave birth to a powerful new political force, the public-sector union. For the first time in American history there was an interest dedicated wholly to lobbying for a larger government and the taxes and debt to pay for it….
…public sector unions are displacing political machines as the turnout mechanism for the Democratic Party. They are the new Tammany Hall.”
Paul Ryan’s budget is proof of how difficult it is to stop the machine until things became well and truly desperate.Siegel noted that “reform” was really another word for the elites acting to save their own necks:
During its own “lost decade” after 1993, Canada shaped up its finances and it has weathered the latest economic crises well. New Zealand’s Roger Douglas in the 1980s and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder in the early 2000s cut into expensive welfare states. In all these cases, Mr. Siegel notes, center-left parties carried out painful reform. “They did this out of necessity.” Sooner or later, American politicians will face the “unavoidable” reckoning, he adds. “It’s not the mean tea partiers who force this. It’s the facts on the ground.”
This implies that while the moral impulse to reform is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition to achieve change. The Federal government and both political parties can shrug off outrage until a financial and/or political crisis brings the house of cards down.Perhaps the best thing about the budget deal is it brings the cliff a trillion dollars closer…”
It’s also why the folks back home are preparing to give Ryan, who not only passed a budget many consider articles of surrender, but collaborated on an amnesty bill with Luis Gutierrez, one of the rankest, most partisan Progressives on the planet, the…
…and they may actually be valid; however, with the only apparent difference right now between the parties being not whether America’s headed off a fiscal cliff…
…but simply how soon we’ll reach it, Washington and the Heartland evidently aren’t even on the same page.
Okay…some in the Heartland and Washington…
…are on the same page.
Next up, our coverage of Campaign ’16 continues with the Washington Examiner recounting…
“…Since the Republicans faced off Tuesday on CNN, a debate has raged over whether Cruz has been a quiet supporter of legalization, short of citizenship, all along, or whether Rubio has been conveniently mischaracterizing the Texan’s position to obscure his own support for a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.
Based on Cruz’s interview with the Washington Examiner on July 1, 2013, just a few days after Senate passage of the comprehensive “gang of eight” immigration bill that Rubio co-authored, it’s not unreasonable to walk away thinking that Cruz supported the concept of legalizing illegal immigrants — at least back then — as long as the border is secured first and that legal status was not part of a broader pathway to citizenship.
At the very least, his position is far more nuanced than the simplistic opposition to “amnesty” that he tends to focus on in debates and on the stump. Here’s the relevant passage, presented unedited and in full, from that 35 minute interview with Cruz, conducted in Houston at the Free Enterprise Institute think thank that the senator credits with helping to form his political world view…”
Though as Guy Benson writing at Townhall.com suggests…
“…Rubio was a Jeb Bush acolyte who embraced the Tea Party and ran for senator in Florida against Charlie Crist. Crist was the popular sitting governor in the state and Rubio was thought to be a huge underdog. However, the grassroots embraced Rubio.
…Although Rubio is significantly more conservative than Crist, the conservative base would have never rallied to his side if he had supported amnesty; he would have lost in a landslide.In other words, Rubio’s anti-amnesty position was one of the central promises of his campaign. In fact, Rubio slammed Charlie Crist for being pro-amnesty and very specifically said he opposed giving illegal aliens citizenship.
…Unfortunately, even though Marco Rubio is only in the Senate today because he claimed to be in favor of securing the border and stopping amnesty, his position shifted 180 degrees and he became the front man for the Gang-of-Eight amnesty bill.
…Marco Rubio’s Gang-of-Eight bill wouldn’t have wiped out the Republican Party; it would have just insured that no Republican to the Right of Arlen Specter would ever be elected as President again after it demographically flooded conservatism out of existence in America.
…Put another way, ifMarco Rubio becomes the President of the United States, the future of our republic depends on Rubio telling the truth this time after he already lied about the same thing to people who walked over broken glass to get him elected.
So now, are you ready to walk over broken glass to get Marco Rubio elected? Choose wisely because if Rubio becomes President and he’s lying about immigration again, it will be the end of the road for conservatism in America.
We know we’re not.
Moving on, in the Monday Morning Quarterback segment, FOX News reports…
“Soooo…you’re saying it would have might have meant something had I spoken up at the time?!?
“Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel revealed in an extensive interview published Friday that he had approved plans to strike Damascus with Tomahawk cruise missiles after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad crossed the “red line” by using chemical weapons – but President Obama told him to stand down.
The interview with Foreign Policy comes nearly a year after his acrimonious exit from the Obama administration. Still smarting from the circumstances of his departure, Hagel told Foreign Policy that the White House tried to “destroy” him even after he resigned…”
Yeah…
As if anyone could wreak any more havoc upon Hagel than Chuck did himself…the day he went to work for The Obamao! February 27, 2013, Hagel sold out his country, his party and himself. Anything after that is simple sour grapes and a transparent attempt to restore any reputation he had in the first place…beyond dimwittedness.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, and this just in from the Volunteer State:
“A Shelbyville woman has been arrested 17 times for allegedly driving drunk. Dorothy Hanson’s charges date back to 1985. Police said six of the offenses have taken place in the past 10 years.
…Police said Hanson had open beer and whiskey containers in her car, and paramedics were unable to draw blood from her being so dehydrated. In addition to the DUI arrests, Chief Jan Phillips said she now has 16 charges of driving on a revoked license.“She’s a convicted habitual offender, and we need those type of people off the road,” Phillips said. “It could be a terrible accident sometime in the future if this continues on.”
Hanson was back at work Wednesday and unavailable for comment, but her father told Channel 4 she’s a good person with an alcohol problem.He said he doesn’t know why his daughter continues to drink and drive, but she hasn’t been behind the wheel of a car since the most recent arrest…”
And likely won’t be…right up until the next time she does it. “Good person” or bad, were there ever a case for incarcerating or incapacitating someone in the furtherance of the public good due to a complete lack of self control and utter disregard for others, this is it!!!
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.