He went on, noting “I hate to break that to you, but it’s the actions that you look at, not the words you listen to.”
And he’s right, though regulars of this site — the “pessimistic, downer site” that has caused so many chirping GOP-boosters to run screaming from the daily Visigothy — aren’t hearing this for the first time.
What brought Levin to state this so bluntly, using words like “quisling” to describe OK’s Tom Cole, is the reaction of the GOP leadership in the Senate to the Mike Lee proposal, which would fund all the rest of the government, but would ask the House to refuse to fund ObamaCare — the ready occasion for such a brilliant strategic broadside being that Obama continues to re-write the law on the fly, handing out waivers and delays to corporate interests while insisting that private citizens and smaller businesses get no such grace period. This is law by whimsy, which means it is no stable law at all. It is lawlessness and imperial diktat.
The Lee plan — which McConnell has remained silent on, but whose position we can glean from Cornyn’s sudden desire to have his name removed from the Lee letter, McConnell being the only Senate Republican who can put pressure on Cornyn — is being actively opposed and publicly criticized by Republicans, who insist that because Obama is President, the measure is nothing more than a “temper tantrum” (Cole, a Boehner Lt.) and “one of the dumbest ideas” Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has ever heard.
To be clear, the measure would not shut down the government unless Obama and Reid decided to shut down the government. And even then, the GOP House can pass bill after bill funding all other aspects of the government, leaving the ball in Obama and Reid’s court.
Beyond even that, the strategy is a political winner — not just a Constitutional and fiscal winner. And that’s because it amounts to the GOP keeping it’s promise to repeal ObamaCare, not by way of symbolic votes that will always go to the Senate to die, and so are not votes to repeal ObamaCare at all; but rather by using the power of the purse to defund inequitably enforced and wildly unpopular law.
This is, as I’ve noted a million times here, the perfect way to pull the veils off of the GOP establishment and its ruling class designs. It essentially puts an end to the Kabuki theater we’ve all been witness to from the GOP leadership (who I’m convinced secretly salivate over the power and revenue ObamaCare will bring into the government) and forces them to show their faces: any Republican who does not support the measure is, in fact, voting to keep ObamaCare and see it implemented and taking root.
And that’s the genius of the plan: it clarifies. It shows us just who is who, and who we must insist be primaried. Because we know all of these RINOs go back home and placate the TEA Party by mouthing conservative/classical liberal platitudes that they forget just as soon as the vote goes their way.
Which puts them in league with the Democrats and against the base of their own party — not to mention, in a position where they refuse to act in the best interest of the American people, who overwhelming hate this law.
There can only be one reason for that, and that reason will soon become clear: they are statists acting the part of foils in a 2 party system that isn’t. Our Congress has become nothing more than the political equivalent of professional wrestling, complete with villains, baby faces, etc.
It’s a charade. And Lee, Rubio, Paul, Cruz, and others are hoping to expose the Party leadership and it’s long-time establishment fixtures for what they are.
It’s simple enough to turn this into a national crusade, and I hope the various TEA Party groups do just that: you vote for a continuing resolution to fund the government that doesn’t excise the funding for a law that is being used to harm religious liberty, nationalize health care, and is being implemented and will be enforced unequally, than you are not upholding your oath to the Constitution nor the promises you made to your constituencies.
And you need to have your ass booted back home, even if that means losing seats to Democrats.
There’s no reason to have a two party system if one party merely mouths its opposition, while in the end routinely folding and growing government. Senator Burr is negotiating a $600 billion tax increase with the White House. Yet he thinks defunding ObamaCare and then forcing the Democrats to shut down the VA, park services, etc., is a dumb idea.
We’re being ruled by morons. Who are all the more dangerous because they are also cynical double agents for statism and big government.
Gonna need to burn down this village to save it, I’m afraid.
And they just keep on getting worse.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/26/exclusive-rnc-operatives-join-holders-campaign-against-texas-several-other-states/
Steve Hayes: Leading from Behind
We’re being ruled by morons.
I have but one ruler, and it’s a nice 15-inch stainless steel number with a cork backing.
I’ve got 3 or 4 tape measures, though.
link
Believing your own PR is a good way to lose touch with all reality.
And another example of believing your own PR and losing all touch with reality. A special feature of the [bugs-in-the-brain] left.
Treating the poor creatures as if they were humans of the left.
I’ve got 3 or 4 tape measures, though.
A co-worker just showed me a photo of his daughter’s arm, which had been neatly sliced open by the metal tape measure her brothers were using as a marble ramp.
About a dozen stitches. But he took a photo of the cleaned wound, fat hanging out, to show all and sundry the nice clean cut it made.
Oh, is Rubio on board with Lee’s plan?
Good for him, if so.
beltway bs
Krauthammer’s Take: Trying to Defund Obamacare ‘Really Dumb’
it’s Friday. a little joy
and Laz Diaz fucking sucks.
Huzzah! Eric Bolling, who has been singing “Slim” Christie’s praises for months, finally sees the light and declares him (Christie) dead to him.
Moar Junior, moar Danny, less Bolling and way way less Perino.
Dana needs to go on an extended vacation. The sooner the better.
the bushies are out in force
unless maybe Claude Bolling, who isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
less rove fauxnews
I don’t know if anyone can pull it up, but Levin referenced a op-ed that argued the Republicans won the infamous shutdown of ’95. Sure, Dole lost to Clinton, but the GOP kept congress and by 2000 Clinton was claiming credit for the Republican budgets that turned the deficit into surplus.
The problem is that the Republican lost the media battle –which is the only battle most politicians care about.
What with our elections being reduced to glorified high school popularity contests and all.
Limbaugh talked about 1995 too today.
Gingrich and Erickson too.
Maybe Rush is where I heard it. The little bit of last night’s Levin and today’s Rush that I actually heard are sort of running together in my head.
The point being, the Republicans think they lost or at best won a pyyrrhic voctory because they weren’t seen as being right.
Of course, when was the last time a Republican had the balls to say, “I’m and right and we both know it.”?
[…] Levin channels pw: “The formal position of the Republican Party — not it’s propaga… […]