Veritas Salad

Being a liberal means never having to say you are sorry . . .

Victor Davis Hanson raises the many Obama scandals, still to conclude that his base will be forever unmoved. Hanson is of course consistently profound but this editor must say that our own senior editor Don Holmes has been saying much the same thing  about the results of Democrat scandals for many years,  but specifically with reference to Obama’s scandals ever since the first few were exposed.  He long pointed out that while of course only the conservative media uses the word scandal, any reporting in the mainstream media , such as it exists, of Obama’s failures is to dismiss them, downplay them, equivocate.

Obama’s scandals road bumps are only acknowledged by the mainstream media when unavoidable, and then only to be able to  say they reported on the matter while concentrating on the Obama response in doing so,  and then quickly to move along . . .  away from the “old news.”  There is never the level of inquisitorial reporting visited on conservatives for lesser failures or offenses.

Given that one scandal bumps another even the conservative media is hamstrung from getting any traction less thy miss the next story.  I think, your humble editors agree with Hanson that Obama / Democrats can always depend on a 45% base.   Hanson’s fine article serves as a reference listing Obama’s scandals.  Excerpts:

President Obama’s polls are creeping back up again. They do that every time the latest in the series of scandals — the IRS, AP, NSA, Benghazi, and Obamacare messes — recedes into the media memory hole. The once-outrageous IRS scandal was rebranded as psychodramatic journalists being outraged. The monitoring of AP reporters and of James Rosen is mostly “Stuff happens.” The NSA octopus was Bush’s creation. You can keep your doctor and your health plan — period — begat liberation from “job lock” and the ability to write poetry because you don’t have to work . . .

Yet after all the 24-hour outrages, and all the op-eds pointing out that a self-described constitutional-law professor has been the worst adversary of the Constitution since Richard Nixon, and after perhaps even a slide in the polls of a point or two, we will soon forget . . .

In short, Obama will always poll around 45 percent. That core support is his lasting legacy. In a mere five years, by the vast expansion of federal spending, by the demonizing rhetoric of his partisan bully pulpit, and by executive orders and bizarre appointments, Obama has so divided the nation that he has created a permanent constituency that will never care as much about what he does as it cares about what he says and represents.

But never fear, the Republican Establishment is here . . .

to make sure that the “persuadables”regarding Obama have little to persuade them.  Easily intimidated, ever fearful that someone somewhere will say bad things about them, they instead demonstrate that they as Republicans are not serious about their campaign rhetoric.  Those Republicans who demonstrate sincerity, like Senator Ted Cruz,  are undermined and castigated.

The debt crises is monumentally serious, as the Republican leadership tells us. Accordingly Republicans need to act like it.  Andrew McCarthy writing at National Review in an article titled Debt Ceiling Surrender  defends Senator Ted Cruz for doing what he was sent to Washington to do, to fight, including using what is left of the filibuster, to save the nation from debilitating debt. McCarthy takes apart the cynical “let the Democrats be blamed’ subterfuge for public consumption, used by Republican leadership in the Senate.

Indeed, in positing their case to preserve the filibuster, Republicans argued that they had approved fully 99 percent of the president’s judicial nominees. How telling that they should see this as a point in their favor. The filibuster was crucial, they inveighed, because it acts as a brake against radical transformation by a slim but zealous majority. Its 60-vote supermajority hurdle enables the minority to force the majority to act responsibly, to push only nominees and policies that enjoy consensus public support . . .

The people of Texas sent Senator Cruz to Washington to fight against this existential threat, not to talk about fighting it and then assume the Beltway fetal position. The fight is worth making. The 60-vote barrier applies to debt-ceiling legislation — meaning that even with only 45 seats, Republicans have the votes to stop new extensions of our debt-sodden nation’s tapped-out credit card . . .

When they were in the minority, cloture was how Democrats stopped conservative bills and conservative nominees cold. For the Republican establishment, it became the cudgel for beating down right-wing upstarts: Nothing can happen and no one can get confirmed without 60 votes, you see, so we “pragmatic” grown-ups simply must bite the bullet and accept moderately progressive policies and nominees — these “centrist” Democrats just won’t budge . . .

Still the stubborn fact remains: Cloture is the only vehicle for stopping Democrats. They cannot get to 60 without Republican help. . . . The ballgame is the cloture vote: the only one in which Republicans, by sticking together, have the power to shelve any bill — including any debt-ceiling hike — that they truly oppose. Cloture is the substantive vote because it determines whether the bill will pass. Once the 60-vote hurdle is cleared, it is the final vote that becomes the mere procedural formality.

Beltway Republicans do not seem to grasp how ominous this is. They so crave pats on the head from the “let’s make government work” commentariat that they’ve lost any feel for people who are wired differently, who see government as the problem, and who want it substantially downsized. In the end, the “let’s make government work” crowd is with the Democrats; the “kamikazes” are the ones the GOP must have.

Finally, for an impressively complete documentation of the Benghazi tragedy/travesty/impeachable offense, read this article from Jed Babbin and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., writing at the American Spectator, Whitewashing Benghazi.  Regrettably the last paragraph concludes that current Republican leadership in the House is not up to the task of calling Democrats to task.

Soon after the attacks, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf introduced HR-36, a bill to create a House Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Under Wolf’s bill, the special committee would have subpoena power and could force the issue of testimony and access to documents. If it did, we might yet see Obama exercise Executive Privilege just as he did in the “Fast and Furious” scandal. The bill has 177 sponsors, almost enough to pass the House today. The only problem is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t allow the bill to come to the floor. He has repeatedly blocked it from consideration. Without leaders interested in the truth, the American public will never find out, not now, not in the history books, just what happened on September 11, 2012. Nor, on present trends, will they find out why they can’t find out.

Always next time . . . but first we must avoid having people think Republicans are serious.

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