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Infrastructure ‘Deal’ Shows a GOP Still Playing to Lose
The Republican Party is in a position to take both houses of Congress in the 2022 elections as well as make real inroads at state and local levels. This is due largely to the disaster that the first few months of the Biden administration have become. The reversal of Trump-era policies has had an immediate and biting effect. It is the contrast between the open and rapid implementation of the leftist vision that is one of the most powerful marketing tools the GOP has.
The surest way to dampen this opportunity is for the Republican establishment of old to raise its head as the image of the party. Back to business as usual for the politically comfortable will be a clear signal to that wide, dissatisfied swath of common critters known as the American voters that their interests are still secondary to those sitting in the upper chambers of the GOP. It will show that they not only are content with the unproductive past but are short-sighted as hell.
In case the daily news from the Senate was lost amid the latest COVID panic, or the mundane results from the most woke Olympics in history, or the high drama of a tearful show trial, it seems there is at long last a bipartisan agreement on a trillion and whatever dollar infrastructure bill.
Instead of seizing the chance to stake a principled position in the middle of the most obscene spending spree in anybody’s history, the GOP Senate leadership is gladly slipping back into their old ways. As we saw earlier in the month those senators making up the core of this cave are the usual suspects. But don’t leave out the “leadership.” McConnell has never been a friend to the conservative ideal. To party power perhaps, certainly his own power and position, but hardly the vision of the Founders/Framers. He and his ilk are all too ready to return to a more easy wheeling, dealing pre-Trump atmosphere of comfortable sell-outs.
Of course, the bill will still have to make it through the House where there is a speaker ready to alter it dramatically. Once again valuable ground will be lost. It is there where we may be saved if the bill has to come back to the Senate.
It is a clear statement about the philosophical dependability of the establishment wing of the Senate that our real hope for stopping a disaster of a reconciliation bill lays not with the strength of the GOP but on two Democrat senators. It is being reported now that 17 GOP senators have lined up to be a part of this sham.
I can only hope that enough citizens contact their senators and turn some of those votes and hopefully stiffen some backbones for when it comes back from the House. But this clearly tells us that the push needs to begin now for new leadership in the GOP, especially at the Senate level. There are a few dependable fighters who see the long-range picture. But not nearly enough.
My sense is that the Dems are pushing so hard on all fronts because they can feel the tide turning against them among the general population. The ones who are missing the mood shift in the country are the GOP establishment types. They still are acting like this whole deal was about Trump and not them!
Only a few months ago we had a tighter border than we had had in decades. Regulations had been cut on business substantially. Actual peace was breaking out in the Middle East. A genuine tax cut was in place. In a three-year period, all the things that GOP regulars had been preaching about but failing to do were being done and creating a pragmatic model for the benefits they bring with them.
There is a whole sea of “regular” people who are more than willing to embrace that model. It is not necessarily Trump that they want. It is that governance, the one that the GOP establishment promised and promised and was never serious about. Well, now they have seen it done seriously if not quietly. And those are the results they now know are possible.
Yes, IF the Republican old guard can manage not to blow it. And if there are fairly secure elections, the control of the entire Congress can fall back to the GOP in 2022. The sure way for them to lose that chance is to a return to the undependable past. Because we have to believe that if given the Congress they will actually do something with it!
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The Wednesday Hannity is just incredible. If you didn’t record it, you may have it on demand on your cable system.
It’s hopeless.
You don’t have to do it right now but if you could outline your reservations sometime that would be great.
What are you expecting, some kind of analysis? I expect something like “He’s kinda Trumpy.” Or maybe “If he were a Senator, he wouldn’t have voted to impeach and remove Trump, therefore I can’t support him.”
Doesn’t support open borders.
Doesn’t support teaching racialist ideology.
Opposes Big Tech monopolies.
These are among the reasons the David French wing doesn’t like DeSantis.
With McCain and Romney as the counter examples, the reservations are probably that DeSantis won’t lose gracefully and may even fight to win.
McCain is terrible. The evidence is you cannot get anybody to explain in plain English how he moved the ball forward for libertarians and conservatives. They just freak out every single time. It’s pathetic.
I’m not even against RINOs that much as long as they don’t do too much damage.
The only path to ousting the Democrats from control of the Congress is an open denunciation and campaign built on the first promise to oust the entire RepubliCAN’T “leadership,” starting with McConnell and McCarthy. Promise party discipline, just as the Democrats have delivered since Pelosi’s first speakership. No campaign promise has any substance apart from the first position that you will absolutely refuse to allow McCarthy or McConnell and their gangs to be in leadership. Say today that they must go and that you will withhold your membership from the GOP caucus, thus denying them a false majority. Make clear that there will be no GOP Speaker or Senate Majority Leader who is not truly America First.
I join you in denouncing big-spending Republicans. I join you in denouncing these infrastructure spending bills. I want infrastructure paid for at the lowest practical level, not by the federal government in the vast majority of cases.
But I disagree that the big-spenders in the GOP are fundamentally different than Donald Trump on this issue. Donald Trump has never been a budget cutter. President Trump wanted a big infrastructure package. If the Democrats could have controlled their emotions, they could have made a big, fat, expensive, pork-filled deal with him, but they could not overcome their intransigence. There are things Donald Trump deserves credit for, but fiscal discipline is not one of them. Donald Trump denounced the “stupid” Republicans in Congress for wanting to send out smaller stimulus checks (or none at all) than the Democrats.
I agree with all of that .. my pre-Trump reference was to the lack of confrontation and pushing strongly on issues – but hardly on the spending front