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Let the day begin, let the day begin, let the day…start

Something one of the Boehner-boosters said on Twitter today really resonated with me: the Constitutionalists are the real RINOs today, if you think about it.

Now, sure, this particular pom-pom waver was going for some online wag cred, and throwing up a middle finger at those of us who dared stand up to a party leadership that has refused to use regular order, passed legislation its constituency opposed, and when necessary caucused with the Democrats to do so. It was a jab at those of us silly enough to believe that if, as a candidate, you promise to run on repealing ObamaCare, or refusing to vote for Boehner as Speaker, you owe it to your constituency to keep that promise. As a House representative you have one job: represent. Doesn’t mean you need to vote every way your constituency demands at all times; but it should at least mean that you follow through on what you told the voters who voted for you you’d do.

None of which holds true any more for the national GOP.

In truth, the TEAM R “pragmatist” who lobbed his bon mot is absolutely right — though for all the wrong reasons. We are, as he says, the true RINOs, but we haven’t left the Party of Lincoln; it left us. Too, there’s no more reason for any constitutionalist to throw in with national Republicans than there is for him/her to throw in with national Democrats. Constitutionalists are reviled as too disruptive of the status quo, too committed to principle rather than the “realist’s” commitment to head-counts and positioning, ruining the inside baseball game with all their rube talk of representative government and other such hopelessly naive wishcasts. Plus, what governing academy did any of they attend (and don’t even give my that Mike Lee, Ted Cruz shit. They’re just in this for the Big Anti-Establishment Bucks!)? Because if just anybody can do this governing thing — or is allowed to impact the outcome of carefully orchestrated political party machinations meant to present the veneer of adversarial government — then we hardly need insider experts and pundits to read the DC tea leaves for us, or walk us through the minutia of Beltway posturing (which, on the GOP establishment side, always takes the form of “playing the long game,” though in fact they’re playing “run out the clock” without having a lead). And that’s just, well, yucky. And “populist.” Smacks of the hillbilly, it does!

— All of which is just a run-up to the takeaway of this post: I have too much pride and conviction to be a RINO. And yet, that’s where my position as a constitutionalist and classical liberal has left me.

So rather than be a hypocrite, or a fringe embarrassment, I will just say this: sayonara, national GOP. You don’t need me anyway, so you’ll take it as no real unkindness if I say I’m just not into you anymore. Now get dressed and take off. Your money’s on the dresser.

37 Replies to “Let the day begin, let the day begin, let the day…start”

  1. RI Red says:

    Dis-enrolling as a Republican this week. May have to start my own partay.

  2. “Hey! There isn’t any money on this dresser! . . . Oooooh.”

  3. McGehee says:

    Living as I do in a state that doesn’t record party registration, anyone here who isn’t a dues-paying party member is an -INO.

    It’s kind of like saying I’m boycotting MSNBC — I already never watch it.

  4. palaeomerus says:

    Glenn Beck has us covered…

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6swpBsCcAALxdG.png

  5. zappaisgod says:

    Is this what you were going for?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to2KasivROc

  6. dicentra says:

    Here’s Glenn hammering Stewart, as every politician should be hammered EVERY DAMN DAY.

    http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/01/06/beck-confronts-gop-congressman-youre-losing-your-soul/

  7. I’ve been an official Republican since the day after my eighteenth birthday and one in spirit since the age of seven [yeah, I was that geek kid in the back of the room with the Nixon/Agnew bumper sticker on my loose-leaf notebook] and I still haven’t unregistered.

    Start some truly serious third second party talk and I’ll gladly do it, but no one has yet. I’m not good at doing original planning and leading, but I can be a pretty damn good agitator.

  8. palaeomerus says:

    Trey Gowdy and Mia Love voted for the satsuma. Shit. Oh well. I tossed the party back in 2012 so this is phantom limb pain anyhoo.

  9. -Mr. Gowdy did not vote.

    http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll002.xml

    He better have a damn good reason.

    -As for Mia Love: count her among the Loyalists.

  10. Turns out, Trey would have voted with the Loyalist scum:

    Gowdy Statement on Speaker Vote

    Washington, Jan 6

    Rep. Gowdy (R-SC) released this statement on the Speaker vote:

    “A cancelled flight, due to weather, from South Carolina to Washington this morning regrettably prevented me from being in Washington for today’s Speaker vote. I apologize to my constituents and my colleagues. My wife and I were traveling this morning in an effort to minimize the amount of school she (a 1st grade teacher) and our daughter (in high school) would miss.”

    “Had our flight not been cancelled, I would have voted for our Conference nominee, John Boehner. The position of Speaker of the House is a difficult job as evidenced by the fact that so few members seek the position. Speaker Boehner was approved overwhelmingly by the Conference in November. In fact, not a single other name was placed in nomination.”

    http://gowdy.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398180

    Fuck you, Trey Gowdy, and your friggin’ hair, too.

  11. sdferr says:

    “Conservative” Republicans cross-dressed as Musette and took a waltzing walk through the cafe.

  12. dicentra says:

    Tammy Bruce Tweeted something revealing today: “Also, the last thing I want is @mialove to sacrifice herself in the name of theatre when Boehner’s reelection was more than likely”

    “And because @MiaLove will do no one least of all her constituents, any good by throwing herself into a volcano.”

    The “theater” jab really chaps my hide, right there. But also there’s the admission that NOT voting for Boehner means your political career is over.

    What does that say about Boehner and his ability to “rule”? It’s not because he’s the best Republican, it’s because he plays the dirtiest.

  13. SDN says:

    “Trey Gowdy and Mia Love voted for the satsuma.”

    One thing to remember, guys, is that by the arcane rules of the House, they needed 29 votes if everyone showed up. A bunch of the Democrats decided to attend Mario Cuomo’s funeral, which pushed the number needed to 35. I suspect that when people realized that, some votes got switched.

  14. dicentra says:

    I suspect that when people realized that, some votes got switched.

    Because “when you strike at the king, you must kill him.”

    See, if Gohmert had won, all of Boehner’s lackeys would storm the cameras and preach to us about cooperation and unity, but because Bohener won, everyone who voted against him will pay through the nose.

    Great leadership we got, folks. I’m looking fondly back at Speaker Newt these days, and that’s sad.

  15. Drumwaster says:

    Your money’s on the dresser.

    You had me, word-for-word, up until that last sentence, because they are never getting another penny from me, and i intend to go on doing everything I can to f*ck them just as badly as they have been f*cking the country.

  16. The Vote For Speaker: List Of Loyalists

    The following is a list of those Republican members of the House who voted for John Boehner to continue as Speaker Of The House: Abraham Aderholt Allen Amodei Barletta Barr Barton Benishek Bilirakis Bishop (MI) Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Bost Boustany…

  17. newrouter says:

    >“Also, the last thing I want is @mialove to sacrifice herself in the name of theatre principle ’cause the high school crowd don’t like me

  18. Dicentra wrote: Great leadership we got, folks. I’m looking fondly back at Speaker Newt these days, and that’s sad.

    You too, eh? Glad to know I’m not alone.

    What a wretched lot we Americans are.

  19. geoffb says:

    Boehner moved swiftly to boot Florida Reps. Daniel Webster and Rich Nugent from the influential Rules Committee.
    […]
    The removal of Webster and Nugent was meant to provide a clear demonstration that what Boehner and other party leaders accepted during the last Congress is no longer acceptable, not with the House’s biggest GOP majority in decades.

    The House Republican leadership is carefully reviewing the list of members who voted against the speaker and those who opposed a procedural motion in December on the so-called “crominibus,” the $1.1 trillion spending package to keep the government open through to September.

    Subcommittee chairmanships might be stripped and other perks could fall away, top Republican sources suggested, in a process that could take months to unfold.

    The revenge of the “Orange-men.”

  20. newrouter says:

    my 2016 fun is running for
    link.

    i will contest this seat in 2016.

  21. palaeomerus says:

    Dicentra,

    Newt was on twitter last night saying he supported Boehner and credited the 2014 GOP election gains to him.

  22. Pablo says:

    I would have to call myself a Republican to be a RINO. So, that’s not a problem.

    Lately, being a real Republican is a fairly shameful thing. Better to be a RINO than part of the GOP problem.

  23. palaeomerus says:

    I’m a FRBTRSAC pronounces “four butter sack”.

    Former
    Republican
    Because
    The
    Republicans
    Suck
    And
    Cringe

  24. newrouter says:

    @ mia love: you go fraud. mike lee next?

  25. dicentra says:

    Newt was on twitter last night saying he supported Boehner

    :: retch ::

    and credited the 2014 GOP election gains to him.

    :: HURL! ::

  26. Blake says:

    Meanwhile, Boehner and McConnell will tell us how truly wonderful Pelosi and Reid are, that working with both of them has been a treasure.

    Saudi Arabia has managed to detonate the world economy. They saw the writing on the wall and went for short term pain in order to bankrupt high cost oil producers so they can maintain market share and income even though demand is falling off a cliff.

    Meanwhile, we get saddled with mealy-mouthed milquetoasts who are more worried about MBM saying bad things about them rather than the financial tsunami that is about to wash over the entire world. We need actual leaders who will stand up to government excess and try to reign things in so we have a chance to survive the disaster that is about to overtake us.

    Instead we get a troika headed by a communist president who will be flanked by the people running congress who never saw a government program that didn’t need more funding.

    Yay us.

  27. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Well, at least we get to string them up from lamposts by their ankles after it goes sideways.

    Always try to look on the bright side.

  28. John Bradley says:

    I for one am getting darned tired of this interminable “…and too early to shoot the bastards” phase in US politics.

  29. The least we should have been doing, by this point, John, is tarring and feathering.

    But, noooooooooo!

    If the liberties of America are ever compleatly ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease.

    When designs are form’d to rase the very foundation of a free government, those few who are to erect their grandeur and fortunes upon the general ruin, will employ every art to sooth the devoted people into a state of indolence, inattention and security, which is forever the fore-runner of slavery

    – They are alarmed at nothing so much, as attempts to awaken the people to jealousy and watchfulness; and it has been an old game played over and over again, to hold up the men who would rouse their fellow citizens and countrymen to a sense of their real danger, and spirit them to the most zealous activity in the use of all proper means for the preservation of the public liberty, as “pretended patriots,” “intemperate politicians,” rash, hot-headed men, Incendiaries, wretched desperadoes, who, as was said of the best of men, would turn the world upside down, or have done it already.

    – But he must have a small share of fortitude indeed, who is put out of countenance by hard speeches without sense and meaning, or affrighted from the path of duty by the rude language of Billingsgate – For my own part, I smile contemptuously at such unmanly efforts: I would be glad to hear the reasoning of Chronus, if he has a capacity for it; but I disregard his railing as I would the barking of a “Cur dog”.

    —Samuel Adams, writing as ‘CANDIDUS’, Boston Gazette, 09 December 1771

  30. McGehee says:

    Those hobbity colonists. What a buncha wacko birds!

  31. […] Bruce was one of the denouncers, as Dicentra pointed-out in a comment over at Protein […]

  32. […] Update! Jeffrey Goldstein uses his tongue prettier than a $10 whore. […]

  33. Slartibartfast says:

    I love The Call. I still have about 3 of their albums on vinyl.

    This is one of my favorites:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSxmmsjxXY

    Yeah, they’re overtly Christian. So is U2, and so is The Alarm.

  34. Slartibartfast says:

    This is a cool song of theirs, too:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_VY7ujyFTE

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