Ed Note: The following excerpts and references are to a set of articles that provide summations, political and legislative analysis, and philosophical motivations justifying conservative Republican attempts the last few weeks to stop Obamacare and push establishment Republicans to do the right thing. It is enough to inform you adequately to tell naysayers to blow it out their a**.
Kurt Schlichter writing at Townhall characterizes the importance of the events the last few weeks to the direction and relevancy of the Republican Party. Schlichter is optimistic that the Republican Party can be salvaged because the leadership being demonstrated of late, by serious conservative legislators like Ted Cruz, comports with the Republican base. He calls on conservatives to invigorate the Party by challenging non-performing establishment leadership.
We are hearing more and more that if the country is to survive as a constitutional republic, and that is a serious “if” given the damage being done to key political social cultural structures, then either the Republican Party has to get its act together in sincere pursuit of conservatism, or a third party will need to be formed.
One thing is clear to us, conservatives are not in a mood to support or defend the current status quo leadership. Unless Party membership can be depended on to indicate something more than membership in a club, indifference to the Party will increase and loyalties and focus will shift to other political outlets.
The title to Schlichter’s article: What If They Gave a Shutdown and No One Cared? is insufficient. The title is only partly relevant to the content. Our view is that the main import of the article is with regard to the Republican Party dynamics resulting from the “shutdown.” Read the entirely worthwhile article here.
The shutdown/debt limit imbroglio wasn’t a defeat. Defeats leave the losers feeling defeated. But the designated losers, the conservative base of the GOP – which, more accurately, now is the GOP – is more eager and excited than it has been in a long time. . . .
Being very familiar with the Constitution, we realize that it’s kind of difficult to pass a law when we only hold the House. We’re clear on that. We were always clear on that. What Ted Cruz did – and what the go-along, get-along gang of Republican stegosauruses hate – is that he fought. He fought. There’s a huge value to drawing a line, to taking a stand, to rallying the troops.
Real leaders – which the GOP establishment lacks – know that. We’ve had two presidential elections in a row with a demoralized base. That’s bad. Just ask Presidents McCain and Romney.
This whole thing really had little to do with Obama and the Democrats and, in the short term, even with Obamacare. This was really about the war between the growing conservative majority in the GOP and the dying GOP establishment minority. It’s a war that must be fought, and which we should welcome. And it’s a war we conservatives will win . . .
John Hayward writing at RedState provides another important article which serves to remind us of the historic motivations for the Tea Party movement. He goes on to effectively establish that what has transpired in the country the last few years is vindication for those concerns and activities. Read more here.
The award for most descriptive (and appropriate) language for the day goes to Sarah Palin who briefly recounts her experience with political reform efforts in Alaska, fighting the so-called Corrupt Bastards Club. She likens the political machinations in Washington over Obamacare similarly:
Today, doesn’t it seem like we have a Corrupt Bastards Club in D.C.? On steroids? It might not be as oily and obvious as its Alaska counterpart, but it’s just as compromised because its members, too, are indifferent to what their actions mean for We the People.. . .
Palin writes very effectively in her Breitbart guest editorial, describing what is at stake with Obamacare and the necessity of doing everything possible to stop it. She credits Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and others for leading the effort, and incisively ridicules the GOP establishment for undermining their efforts.
Obamacare in its current corporatist form isn’t meant to last. It’s meant to push us towards full socialized medicine with a single-payer system. . . .
The full implementation of Obamacare puts us firmly on the path to the left’s desire of a single-payer system of socialized medicine. That was the end game for Obama and the Democrats all along. The end is now in sight for them, and the media doesn’t even ask about it.
So what was the GOP establishment’s game plan to fight this march towards socialism? They’ve been busy denouncing Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and their supporters, along with the good House Members who fought for our one chance to defund Obamacare. But what were the wayward Republicans’ alternative plans? They thought we could ignore the implementation of Obamacare and simply focus on some future electoral victories in the hope that some day the stars will align and we’ll have super majorities in the House and Senate along with a Republican president who would hopefully repeal this disastrous soon-to-be set in stone new “entitlement.”
There’s a big problem with that scenario. It overlooks the everyday reality before our eyes. As Obamacare is being implemented, Americans can’t afford to pay for it. We can’t even sign up for it on the impossibly cumbersome websites, but the IRS will fine us for not doing so anyway! Obama gave his pals, and Congress gave themselves, tickets off this train wreck via waivers. Cruz and Lee fought for us to get the same relief the big guys got. The media and disloyal politicians turned on them and, divided, we lost.
The only credible plan of action was to do everything in our power to delay the implementation of Obamacare – defund it, postpone it, whatever – while at the same time work to elect a majority to repeal it. That is what Cruz and Lee and those Tea Party aligned House Members were doing. There was no other credible alternative plan to seize the constitutionally appropriate opportunity to legislatively close the purse strings to stop the juggernaut of full socialized medicine.
In case readers are still in doubt about the value of fighting the good fight, consider this admission by Mitt Romney to Sean Hannity during a recent interview The quote below is as it was reported in Newsmax:
Nearly a year after his presidential campaign ended in failure, Mitt Romney says he wasn’t clear enough in 2012 on one basic message: how bad President Obama’s policies are for the American economy.
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Tuesday, the former Massachusetts governor admitted, “I did not make that message clear as I should have during my campaign.”
The statement in effect validates the electoral postmortem most Tea Party movement conservatives had about the Romney campaign. R Mall
