When she’s right, she’s right
Every GOP Senator and Representative, along with the RNC’s leadership and staff should have a copy of Ann Coulter’s latest column nailed to their office doors. The good guys won’t mind and the Chamber of Commerce lackeys can consider it due notice. Her conclusion is set in bold by us.
GOP Double-Crossing Traitors (excerpts)
Now that a federal judge has held Obama’s illegal executive amnesty unconstitutional, perhaps U.S. senators will remember that they swore to uphold the Constitution, too.
Back when they needed our votes before the last election, Republicans were hairy-chested warriors, vowing to block Obama’s unconstitutional “executive amnesty” — if only voters gave them a Senate majority. . .
Poll after poll showed Americans ranking illegal immigration as the No. 1 most important problem facing the nation.
. . . Now McConnell is Senate majority leader — and he claims his hands are tied.
Whether or not the Democrats continue to filibuster the bill containing the amnesty defund, the government won’t shut down — contrary to hysterical claims by the media and George Will. The government is funded. Only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be “defunded.”
Nearly all DHS employees are “essential” personnel required to stay on the job even if the department is defunded —
Approximately 200,000 of DHS’s 230,000 employees will keep working.
It’s hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren’t trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they’re intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty.
If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again.
Of course Karl Rove, in today’s WSJ, expounds on what a great opportunity the Texas Judge’s decision gives the GOP to capitulate. But, that’s just Karl.
Some of Rove’s comments, and fairly casual rebuttals that came to mind as we read his article, are set forth below.
A GOP Lifeline On Immigration—If They’ll Take It
Congressional Republicans are right to try to stop President Obama’s November 2014 executive action suspending enforcement of immigration laws for millions of illegal aliens.
Rove diminishes what is at stake when he infers that Obama’s orders were only about suspending enforcement, as if cattle cars were on the way to pick “dreamers” up and take them to the border, and not about his conversion of the treasury, his abrogation of his duty to enforce the nations laws, his procedural malfeasance, and all manner of related offenses. Further, at no point in the article can Rove bring himself to utter what is the Republican position — that Obama’s actions are “unconstitutional.”
Already, some House Republicans are demanding the Senate scrap its 60-vote requirement to take up bills, a rule that has been in place for nearly a century.
This is in reference to what Rove presumes is the only way to break the Democrat filibuster. It is what Harry Reid would do but that is beside the point for now. Someone who heads a well-financed political fund, supposedly committed to conservative principles and protecting the Constitution, would be all about inundating a select few of the states “represented ” by Democrat Senators with compelling ads. They would be aimed at their blue-collar Democrat constituencies who largely oppose immigration amnesty as well.
Instead, Rove is still shilling for the Chamber of Commerce, still trying to finesses a way to protect as much as he can of what they want by protecting as much of Obama’s actions. His advice – forget using Congress’s own authority to save the country from Obama’s policies as long as Obama might have some authority to do some of the things he does. The Chamber of Commerce is comfortable with Obama’s actions in service to their principle of cheap labor with accompanying high welfare costs spread to other taxpayers. It is a virtue we don’t see expressed in any stanza of Emma Lazarus’s poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Rove continues:
If no appropriation bill becomes law, Mr. Obama will blame Republicans for refusing to fund homeland security, calling it irresponsible during a time of heightened terrorist threats. The media will amplify his criticism. Already, a Feb. 12-15 CNN/ORC poll found 53% would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown while only 30% would blame Mr. Obama. Those numbers would only get worse for the GOP if the DHS shuts down
Yes, and similar polls said the same about the supposed 2013 shut down, thanks in no small part to the likes of Rove for amplifying the liberal media talking points instead of denigrating those points in support of Republicans. And speaking of “shut downs”, Rove is the true shutdown guru –shutting down Bush in 2007 who chopped wood for the rest of his term rather than defend his policies and performance and the conservatives that brought him to power.
“A DHS shutdown would also damage Republican chances to win the White House in 2016. We’ve seen this movie. After the 2012 election, Gallup found 43% of Americans viewed the GOP favorably while 50% did not. After the October 2013 government shutdown, 32% were favorable toward the GOP while 61% were not. It took hard work and lucky breaks for Republicans to get those numbers back to 42% favorable, 52% unfavorable by the 2014 election.”
And yet Republicans won in an historic landslide with those supposedly relevant unfavorables. Again, by the way, as superficial as they are, they would have been less but for Rove’s and his ilk’s amplification of the Democrat narrative as regards Republican policies on immigration.
Republicans did well in the 2014 midterms despite the 2013 shutdown, not because of it. Not a single new Republican senator campaigned on having voted for or supported it.
Pure Rovian BS . . . easily checked by the way. Take the candidates mentioned in this article — Will Government Shutdown Hurt House Republicans Hoping to Get to the Senate? — the actual electoral results undermine Rove’s contention. Democrats expended resources mightily to tie Republican candidates running for the House and the Senate to the “shut downs” including victorious Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst, who supported the use of the horrible shutdown . If it was an effective Democrat attack, Republicans would have lost ground in both the House and Senate. In our judgement the Democrat attacks helped amplify differences, serving to endear people to those Republicans.
No, Rove’s line is not merely BS, it is absurd. Of course Republicans didn’t lead with “vote for me and I will shut down government” (Roves adoption of liberal Democrat narrative). That is the Democrat attack line. But Democrats did everything they could to attach every Republican to the shut down to little or no avail. Where was the sting Mr. Rove?
Rove’s analysis so far is Rovian deception, irrelevancies, and cover for unnecessary capitulation. Rove continues:
Republicans can now offer a rider that refuses funds for executing Mr. Obama’s directive that is under court challenge, dropping the other add-ons the shutdown caucus insisted on. This would remove the excuse of Senate Democrats skeptical of Mr. Obama’s directive. Either they act on their concerns or go on record supporting the president’s unconstitutional action.
So is Rove trying to be helpful? The provisions he says to drop reflect congressional prerogatives regarding due diligence authorized by their constitutional control of the power of the purse. The restrictions are in furtherance of protecting the country from very bad policy. Obama is not arbiter of how money is spent unless authorized by law passed by Congress, or their indifference. Congress can restrict his use of funds in all matters through the legislative process.
Rove needs to answer which it is and which will it be. Do Democrats have the effective cover of the media or do they not? If so, then whatever Democrats do will be spun by “media” as necessary and proper. An excuse removed will be supplanted by another and protected by the same all-powerful liberal media. The Republican majority should just fold up and return leadership to Pelosi and Reid or just Obama.
R Mall with DLH
Obama will probably win on Appeal. Just 4 perspective where were U guyz when the Gipper and Bush II were writing their own Constitution?