A second round of poll results from a survey of Republican voters taken Christmas week by Pat Caddell’s EMC Research was released on Sunday. The poll shows that a revolution is at hand with a stunning majority of 2014 GOP voters who gave their party control of both houses of Congress ready to throw out the Republican leaders of both houses in favor of new leadership.
Only sixteen percent of voters surveyed want both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to serve as leaders of the House and Senate respectively when the 114th Congress convenes this week. Boehner’s support on his own for Speaker of the House of Representatives is a pitiful twenty-five percent while McConnell’s support for Senate Majority Leader is just as bad at twenty-seven percent.
A shocking nine out ten GOP voters have no faith in political leaders of either party.
Ninety-one percent agreed with the statement, “Political leaders are more interested in protecting their power and privilege than doing what is right for the American people.”
Eighty-nine percent agreed with the statement, “The power of ordinary people to control our country is getting weaker every day, as political leaders on both sides fight to protect their own power and privilege, at the expense of the nation’s well-being.”
Seventy-nine percent do not believe, “the US government is working for the people’s best interests.”
Eighty-seven percent believe the country is on the wrong track.
The latest poll results on Boehner come two days before he stands for reelection as Speaker.
Certainly it’s fair to say that these numbers represent a populist uprising within the GOP’s voter base, if not an all-out conservative surge. And yet I spent hours this morning arguing with heavily-followed, status-quo GOP pundits on Twitter who insist that a challenge to Boehner is nothing more than a “fundraising stunt” — the Alinskyite tactic on offer in such a sentiment being to trivialize and diminish those who don’t hew to some purported “common-sense, long-game” brand of GOP insider pragmatism, the very kind that has given us “leaders” like Boehner and McConnell in the first place.
The very fact that the challenge to Boehner will be difficult to win is itself posited as a reason to avoid the hard work of trying it. Which is not too far from where many on the left (and too many on the right) fall with respect to ideas of language: sussing out real intent in a complex work can be difficult and is impossible to ever claim with certainty; therefore, simply doing as you please with marks is every bit as legitimate an interpretive function as is attempting to reconstruct an author’s intent.
In both cases, however, one thing is certain: failure to try something difficult will result in its defeat nearly 100% of the time.
Losing a challenge is not the same thing as being unserious about making it. And no, we are not obliged to fall behind Boehner should he win the Speakership again — just as we weren’t obliged to fall in line behind Obama just because he won a couple elections. In fact, when Obama told McCain he was obliged to do the same thing in explicit terms, many of those now trivializing attempts at serious reform were among the first to claim OUTRAGE at Obama’s cocksure audacity and (at the time) latent imperial impulses.
It both astounds and saddens me to read Republican pundits arguing — without revulsion — that if you’re going to attempt to slay the king you’d better not miss, a formulation that, when presented in the context of the People’s House and representative government, is both deflating and, worse, completely ironic, and yet argued unironically.
Here’s a tip for the GOP Beltway status quo: if you are caught claiming that a challenge to a sitting Speaker who has broken nearly every promise he’s made to his constituency is “unprofessional,” you are concomitantly claiming that what you advocate for is a professional ruling class, one free of the troublesome challenges that may come from the Party’s constituency in any venue other than local elections, where name recognition, money, past pork, and gerrymandering assures an incumbency rate above 85%. Indeed, you are arguing for a kind of de facto aristocracy.
That you can do so with such ease while wearing an R behind your name is merely further proof that we live in a post-Constitutional America, one where party affiliation matters little and big government cronyism is to be protected at every turn.
Boehner will likely retain his Speakership. But all that tells us is that the system is corrupt, and that too many on “our” side treat Beltway politics and all that flows from it as some immutable force of nature.
Happily, the Founders found such an idea to be bullshit, too.
And The Founders acted.
That is our charge as members of their Posterity.
The Gohmert Challenge is a fine way to start-off 2015…
…as is the [hoped for] return of Sir Jeffrey of the Gold Stone.
At the risk of incorrectly paraphrasing Orwell: And since, as Orwell said, language shapes thought, inherent difficulty becomes the excuse from trying anything. E.G. we can’t impeach the faithless chief executive because it’s too hard to get a conviction in the Senate, we can’t repeal Obamacare, defund the illegal amnesty, defang the IRS, EPA etc. because it’s too hard to override a veto (nevermind the fact that it wrong foots the Democrats by forcing them to uphold vastly unpopular actions).
Plus all the but what about the nasty mean things Democrats will say and think about us!
handwringingpantywetting from the pragmatism uber alles chorus.Related thoughts from Andrew Klavan:
That last bit isn’t quite right. What really happens, as Jeff could tell you, were he not busily scuttling about ‘neath the kitchen sink looking for some greasy crumb upon which to snack, is that you turn into a cockroach.
And who wants to listen to a bug?
>“The GOP leadership, the lawyers, the lobbyists, the consultant class of the Republican party, and all the big donors don’t understand that these people are angry. … They are saying that John Boehner doesn’t care about them, and all he cares about is the special interests. I’ve never seen anything like this in the base of a party. And that is why the analogy to the Whigs is not so far-fetched.”<
“Will be” puts the ignoring into an ongoing tense, and that is an “ongoing” of a past “has already been” ignored event. This is another aspect of the post-constitutional America.
More related thoughts from David Pryce-Jones:
In the present age, ideology has defined reality.
In the present age, ideology has defined reality.
That, of course, is it’s purpose, which is born out of a profound dissatisfaction with Life as it is. All Ideologies are nothing but the fantasies of malcontents, immature dreamers who refuse to accept the hard-won Wisdom accumulated over the centuries by those who hoped to prevent their Posterity from launching on the painful process of reinventing the wheel every generation.
Once an Ideological system is implemented and it’s creators and proponents see it fail [as it always does], their frenzied reaction inevitably leads to the massacre of innocents.
The same thing happens, of course, whenever their plans for a Brave New World are frustrated long enough or when they launch their Revolutions.
The ending for the Ideologues’s progress is always the same: a Nihilistic Dance Of Death.
True, but it is also the case that their “progress” their evolution starts in the wonderful hopie land of the left but soon descends into the darkness and death of the far right. And so must always be tried one more time – more time – more time, but with smarter, better, minds leading this time – this time – this time.
The sad thing is that the this time — this time — this timers are attempting to immanentize an eschaton Marx and Engels and their fellow travelers knew damn well was never going to happen.
It was all about convincing the low-info hoi polloi to support a totalitarian regime consisting entirely of The Party, giving The Party absolute power, on the false promise that The Party would one day … give it all back.
The Left may well be the only ones in history to go bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the people. And they keep doing it, generation after generation, never learning.
Gotta be a pony here somewhere.
One cannot know whether Price-Jones entitles his own essay or whether that task is taken by his editor. Still, taking the title “Bad Ideas Never Die” as Price-Jones own, let us take also the subtitle given as “The Fight for Free Speech Will Never End” as also his own (and this latter as the more fitting summation, we see, when we read the substance of his article).
The fight for free speech will never end.
There we have the suggestion of a permanent binary condition in human life, inescapably.
Two sides. What two sides?
There are many possible answers to that question. However, for purposes of condensation and intensification, why not take the first answer, the answer when the question was first asked, i.e., the answer from Plato’s Republic: the warring parties are Poetry (representing the gods and the polis [the city], the governing authority) and Philosophy (representing the life of those who seek to know).
I don’t know if that is the first answer Sdferr. That, I think, was “the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods”.
So the poet’s depiction of the serpent’s admonition in the Garden is the birth of skepticism? I will have to think skeptically about that to see whether there is any truth to it.
The two sides are “Do as you’re told” and “Get offa my lawn.”
-McGehee wrote: The two sides are “Do as you’re told” and “Get offa my lawn.”
Exactly. Those who wish to ‘reign in Hell’ versus those who wish to ‘serve in Heaven’. Those who bear the Mark Of Cain and those who carry God in their Souls.
-To GeoffB: They’re gone so far to the right that they’ve ended-up on the far side of the left, eh?
So the poet’s depiction of the serpent’s admonition in the Garden is the birth of skepticism?
I didn’t know we were talking about the birth of skepticism, sorry. I was speaking of Lucifer’s
admonitiontemptation, “you can be as [a] god”, as the genesis of the binary condition in human life. The two sides are; good born of self control, evil born of temptation.I suspect as individuals our perception of evil is greatly influenced by our own struggles with temptation. Is why a murderer in prison can feel morally superior to a child molester.
McGehee, I think you got it right, but I’d poise it in a more frightening way:
The two sides are “Get offa my lawn” and “Hi, we’re from the government and we’re here to help.”
LB, I think you do indeed have it right.
[…] Ernst wrote: ‘In the present age, ideology has defined reality.’ […]
The subject, I had thought, was initiated by Ernst’s link to a David Pryce-Jones essay. Whether there is a sturdy doctrine of free speech in the Biblical teaching I would leave to others to say — but that there is a kind of origin of a free speech teaching (an origin of what we in the West used to call liberality) in Plato’s works generally taken, and in the Republic specifically, I think I know and would urge others to investigate for themselves.
The two sides are “Get offa my lawn” and “Hi, we’re from the government and we’re here to help.”
Indeed, in the Soft Totalitarianism that has infected The West and is now devouring the last holdout [‘The Camp Of The Saints and The Beloved City’, as it were (Revelation, Chapter 20:7-9)]: America.
McGehee’s statement applies, however, outside of The West and is the second stage of Totalitarianism that is starting to be applied in those nations of The West that have been living under the Soft version for quite some time.
Get off a my lawn
vs.
You didn’t build that you slaveholder genocidal orientalist union-cheating planet poisoning rapist who doesn’t respect non-binary gender pronouns and headmates and nuked Japan unnecessarily and also occupy wallstreet and divest from Israel..I mean the occupied Plestinian territory.
I think a “because science you stupid jesus freak” needs to go in there somewhere too…
Try to imagine Socrates barking “get offa my lawn”. It isn’t easy, not least because it is difficult to imagine Socrates having a lawn for which he gave a damn in the first place.
Speaking of speaking freely, we should all note an enormously important contemporary example. How strange that it happens to issue from a politician!
If Socrates ever said “Get offa my lawn” I’m sure Plato would have edited it out or interpreted it to mean something more in line with his own “wouldn’t it be nice if we could be philosopher kings but we can’t because OOH look at the calves on THAT sailor” views.
“Get offa my lawn! Harvest that hemlock from your own damn crop!”
The subject, I had thought, was initiated by Ernst’s link to a David Pryce-Jones essay. Whether there is a sturdy doctrine of free speech in the Biblical teaching I would leave to others to say
Ah, see, I was just responding to your singular comment.
As for Biblical teaching, forgive me, I thought free will was inherently self- evident. I would think one would have to be studiously ignorant to miss it.
For a quick primer, compare freedom of speech as practiced in Christian nations compared to freedom of speech in non-Christian ones. The difference is really quite stark.
So you couldn’t be bothered to read the article I addressed?
It’s not a great article, I’d submit, but it is relatively clear as to the question it addresses. That question, the right (and necessity) to freedom of political speech is this morning made particularly poignant by murders in Paris.
Liberal society has not been the human norm, at least not when measured against the length and breadth of human political history. In fact, the expression of the necessity of that right goes hand in hand with the birth of liberal political society, and finds its strongest expression in America. This particular aspect of political right isn’t equivalent to the idea of free will, since free will can and has been recognized (as you note) for at least four thousand years, and that, quite apart from resort to Biblical teaching, insofar as this notion of self-agency is common to men who had no knowledge at all of Biblical teaching.
Fascists running on ego-boost, fascists on cruise control in their windowless serial-killer van, fascists with lead foot.
The last is the story sdferr referenced above.
When the ego-boost is turned off and the 6-71 is engaged.
One more just for the F… of it.
“Lucy Sun – First Amendment Advocate and Community Organizer” says “Thug” Is Racist, Shouldn’t Be Used In Statement On Attempted Cop Killers.
A real First Amendment Advocate.
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Thatl Walsh piece geoffb linked above brings us back to the Pryce-Jones piece. Bad ideas never die. “To have a pen is to have a war” indeed. And if you don’t give yours up, or at least reign it in, you might get hurt.
What’s that old saw about the Second amendment keeping the First Amendment viable? Anybody remember how that goes?
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