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And If Hillary Wins? Then What?
I take it for granted that President Hillary Clinton will abuse her position to enrich herself and her cronies and run a disastrous foreign policy. But while mud is being tracked through the Oval Office, the legislative branch can’t spend another four to eight years doing nothing. Or, it ought not to. But what should it do? Some suggestions:
Reform the budgeting process. Or lay as much groundwork for that as can be done without signed legislation. This plays to Speaker Paul Ryan’s strength, and goodness knows there is work to be done to move the Federal budget out of fantasy-land and towards some real numbers.
Give a voice to reformers in the armed services. Not everyone in (or near) uniform wants to degrade warfighting to the benefit of political correctness, or thinks the battlefield should be run by lawyers. Give these folks a pulpit.
Embarrass the TSA into shutting down. This should be shooting fish in a barrel. What does the TSA do apart from funneling tax money via union donations to the Democrats, inconvenience every voter, and give anti-terrorism a bad name?
Give the intelligence services a platform to win back public trust. For good or bad reasons the public’s trust in the intelligence services has been damaged. Although it goes against their nature, they need to explain themselves to win back that trust. If they deserve it.
Ignore the MSM. That includes Fox News and the WSJ. Take the news – and the messages – directly to the people via YouTube, podcasts and blogs. Paul Ryan used to do this well.
One thing I wouldn’t bother to do is spend time and energy indicting Obama and Hillary. Let’s let history do that.
Published in Domestic Policy, Politics
I laugh at those who advocate converting all their wealth to supplies and arms and moving to remote areas. It Hillary wins I may have to eat crow, ask them to teach me their wisdom, and join them.
Surely not an option for Congresscritters and Senators. At least, not for Republican elected officials. Although if they had to live and work near the Mexican border there might be a Capitol-level fence…
I am all for shutting down TSA, but what is the alternative?
I don’t know. I do know that random searches of every 50th passenger couldn’t be less effective than the TSA.
I wouldn’t spend the time or energy to indict them either, but only because there is zero chance of success. If history were an objective thing, just and true, of which there is also no chance, it would indict Congress, too, for not doing its job.
If Hillary wins, we lose Congress and she never lets us get it back.
I favor profiling.
As many have pointed out Democrats are playing all out war while Republicans are playing a gentleman’s game of golf . Republicans try to win each election , Obama and Hillary are after the complete elimination of the opposition forever. As it is she wants to reverse Citizens United to make it illegal to criticize her and she has said straight out her main enemy is Republicans. She will use her regulatory army of Lois Lerners to make it impossible for Republicans to organize.
The Senate perhaps, but not sure I agree on the House.
Mass resignations and the razing of the
Star ChamberFISA Court might be a good start.Okay, venting done. I agree this is an important issue and that rebuilding that trust is essential and that they’ve been put in an extremely difficult political situation, in addition to the other risks they’ve taken on.
I would just like to go on the record as saying that they’ve got a lot of work to do here.
Explicitly Clarify Warpowers. This subject has been a mess since at least Vietnam and its roots go much further back, but we’ve really reached the breaking point on this one, where presidents basically claim they can do whatever they want and Congress … sort of runs and hides. There are cases to be made on both sides, but some real clarity here would be immensely beneficial to the Republic.
For my money, any president should be scared to launch a new engagement without explicit congressional approval.
Yabbut… I’m sympathetic to this argument, I just worry that when the president is a lefty military-disdaining anti-American Democrat (ahem), they’re really going to Congress for cover (of their fecklessness and cowardice), not for approval. Makes it complicated.
Force all TSA agents to go through the TSA security screen every day on their way to and from work. Let’s see how they like it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll all quit. Then we can hire a German Shepherd to sniff for explosives and that’s that.
I also disagree with the “no-indictment” approach. For heaven’s sake, is there a less sympathetic figure than Hillary Clinton running for the office? Even Democrats don’t really like her! They’d run a ham sandwich in her place if they could.
I understand the point of the OP is to encourage Congress to be productive in any event. However, one of Congress’s most important functions is to check the president! And one of the greatest sources of frustration and mistrust of Congress (by, at least, the base), is that they’ve been failing to do their job for nigh on eight years now!!
If we, the people, let the corruption Hillary Clinton would bring to the Oval stand? It’s over. Last person to leave be sure to turn off the lights.
The only way to let We, the People, have at the corruption that has been, is, and forever will be associated with the Clintons is to shine a bright light on it. That cannot be done by involving the MSM, or letting them confuse the issue with any type of formal process. Instead, just tell the people, loudly and often, what is going on. Say, in so many words, “The President is corrupt”; “the X deal was bought and paid for”; “these people bribed the President” etc. At some point it isn’t going to be worth doing business with the Clinton machine because you’ll get a big, public, target painted on your back. (Or so one can hope.)
On the other hand, I am sympathetic. It’s not like the hundreds of elected representatives and their vast staffs actually have anything more productive to do than show their allegiance to the rule of law.
I’m not entirely following. Could you elaborate?
“Ignore the MSM. That includes Fox News and the WSJ. Take the news – and the messages – directly to the people via YouTube, podcasts and blogs. Paul Ryan used to do this well.”
Yeah, and some of this, too, from the Ricochet archives.
I think the original sin of the TSA is thinking that airline travel is a matter of national security. It hasn’t been since United 93; passengers and crew will never allow an airline to be hijacked again, which basically limits the potential damage to those on the plane.
Note, I am not saying there is no role for screening and safety on airlines. I am simply saying that responsibility should land squarely on the airlines and port authorities and should be treated as a safety matter, not one of security.
Your list has serious entries, but number one should be the resumption of exercising the House’s power of the purse with the goal of ending federal tyranny.
Yeah, just as a random example, Obama going to Congress for a resolution on an airstrike in Libya (am I remembering correctly?). Nothing this president is ever going to do militarily is ever going to have the desired outcome (in American interests), but he’ll go through the motions of “going to Congress” and then take action on his half assed, cockamamie ideas anyway. He went to Congress for political cover, not because he cared one way or another for their “approval.”
Sure, demand Congressional approval, but if you don’t make the president adhere to the rule of law, it doesn’t much matter. That’s why taking “indictment” off the table is such a huge mistake, imo. In fact, I’d like Republicans to draft up articles of impeachment for Hillary right now. Have them waiting so she can be served as soon as she takes her hand off the Bible after swearing in.
“Welcome back to Washington, darlin’. It’ll be just like old times.”
Most importantly, if Hillary wins, the Senate must reject her far left court nominees
I was thinking something more along the lines of “To arms! To arms!”
If Hillary wins?
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
I think you are mis-remembering this one: Obama made no attempt at even a pretense of going to Congress of Libya (and Congress let him get away with it). The point of going to Congress is — besides the check it provides — to force Congress to either buy into or reject the measure. That will force the president into more accountability.
I am glad somebody brought this point up. We keep talking about what GOP hack is going to win but from where I sit HRC has this thing in the bag. Just as Obama won because he was able to energize the black vote, HRC is going to win because she will energize the womyn vote. While I doubt that HRC will enjoy as large percentage of her womyn minority base as Obama did his black minority base. She does not have too since the womyn minority makes up over 50% of the population so even with the lower overall percentage she will be able to shift enough votes to win by a landslide. The GOP really needs to make plans for what happens after this loss.
On the other hand, HRC is as corrupt as it gets, so I suspect the GOPe will do just fine working with her. I just think it is going to be bad for small government conservatives, Christians, small business owners and any citizens that still have jobs.
Serious oversight of the administrative state. The Congress has collaborated with the Executive to shirk its law-making responsibilities. The least it can do is conduct vigorous investigations and promote access to due process in the unaccountable fourth branch.
I remember there was something he was going to take to Congress, then he wasn’t once he found they were against him. Then he went ahead with his plans anyway. Wasn’t that Libya?
No, that’s basically it.
Not sure how we’re misreading each other here. :)
My point is, with a president as lawless as Obama, the only time congressional approval will be sought (or “required”) is when Congress supports what he’s going to do anyway. It provides buy-in and political cover should things go wrong, as they always do with someone as disinterested in American well-being as Obama is. Requiring congressional approval only serves the people if the president is held to the law.
Which is why I disapprove of the idea that we should preemptively surrender to any president by stating we will forbear any legal action, including indictments and impeachment. What other power to check the president does Congress have now that so much of budgeting is mandatory spending? Let’s see, we can either give in on the military (a primary function of the federal government), or we can pursue legal action against his/her lawlessness.
I think it’d be much more doable to impeach Hillary than it has been Obama. There’s precedent for successfully impeaching a Clinton.
Ah, I think I see where we’re going wrong.
Half of my point is that Congress should retaliate against a president who doesn’t act within — among other things — his granted war powers. That should include impeachment if he does not respond immediately to other means.
Part of the problem is that we’ve left it very stupid and nebulous as to what the President’s war powers are. Unfortunately, there is no political or legal consensus on the matter, which, I think, needs to be rectified.