The article featured here by Harold Hutchison appearing in the Patriot Post is a good summation of the road ahead for President Trump and the GOP.
“In the wake of Trump’s win, we’ll be forced to “prove” we’re not racist, sexist, xenophobic, bigoted, yada yada yada — Usually, said proof would require surrender on policies we wish to advance and/or values we hold dear. Here, we must take a page from Trump and not back down from their unwarranted attacks. We may need to adjust tactics or strategy to win, or limit damage, but we cannot back down.”
This is, perhaps, my biggest takeaway from Mr. Hutchison’s column. I am much less optimistic about the will of some of the GOP’s big guns to actually resist their impulses to want approval from media and the Beltway crowd and the US Chamber of Commerce. Some of the names he cites don’t strike me as staunch conservatives…Ryan, Nikki Haley, even Rubio, whom I believe still harbors his enthusiasm for amnesty, and Ryan who harbors his greatest enthusiasm for Ryan.
Particularly, I found the post-election responses from many of the Republicans who received a very clear mandate from the voters somewhat troubling. For many it appears it’ll be the ‘same ol’, same ol’.
To paraphrase comedian Henny Youngman, ‘take my congressman…PLEASE!’…, he’s from Kansas 3rd District and would not be considered the brightest bulb in the GOP caucus. The establishment put him there and conservatives who couldn’t find an effective primary challenger kept him there.
The congressman is a go along (with the establishment) to get along. When it really counts he delivers for the guys who provide the cash.
Immediately following the GOP convention I, and several fellow conservatives sought an answer from this gentleman to the question would he support Trump. We did not suggest a desired answer and required only a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ noting that if we did not get an answer we’d reach our own conclusions and would vote accordingly.
Unsurprisingly, we did not receive an answer…and our conclusion was that his would be the position the establishment told him to take. From his lack of any sign of open support for his party’s nominee it wasn’t hard to conclude what his instructions were.
Nevertheless, and very sadly, I believe we all decided that it would be foolish to turn over one 435th of the House to a Democrat, especially not the one that party put up, and thus we voted to return our feckless representative to Washington.
The upshot? Pretty much what we expected. Among the first comments he made following his reelection reflected his enthusiasm to ‘reach out’ to the other side of the aisle. Reminding us hapless constituents how important bi-partisanship is and how, because his party was the winner, compromise is essential…or something like that.
No doubt he believes it is necessary to repay the opposition party for their spirited cooperation when they owned the White House.
DLH
That was the situation here in the Iowa 2nd CD — Peters condemned Trump, siad he would not vote for him, but because he was all there was against Loebsack we cast a vote and even put up some signs. Could not shaft him as he did Trump when we were asking people to overlook Trump’s imperfections in comparison to Hillary. The irony is Trump appears to have had coattails for down-ticket candidates who supported him.