Republican Lack of Discipline Exposed by Hagel Confirmation

There is a theory throughout the free world that on certain votes party discipline is expected. Such examples abound in the Parliaments in Europe, Israel, Japan, Australia, Canada and any we may have omitted. It has often been on display within the United States Congress, but almost exclusively by the Democrat legislators and almost never, actually might be never, from the Republican side of the aisle. The nomination by President Obama of former Senator Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense was problematic even before his dreadful performance at his confirmation hearings. As positions go in a President’s Cabinet, Secretary of State, CIA Chief, Chief of the FBI are the few of the positions which rival Secretary of Defense in their importance. This makes the ability to answer questions competently and without overly long hesitations very crucial. Mr. Hagel’s performance left loads to be desired. He not only stumbled on answering questions but also had to correct answers he had given after conferring with handlers sent to aid him in his responses. The United States does not need or desire a Secretary of Defense who is less prepared to answer vital questions than the average Senator would be. Even if this had been the only problem with the Hagel appointment it still would have been worthy of greater objection than was displayed.

But there were already other questions and difficulties posed by Senator Hagel’s previous statements concerning the United States staunchest Middle East ally Israel and his lack of resolve shown towards the Iranian nuclear program as well as his soft approach to such terrorist groups denoted as such by the State Department as Hamas and Hezballah. When one additionally inspects Senator Hagel’s voting record his appointment becomes all the more troublesome. Add in his flippant disregard for many such votes and his snide remark that there was no evidence that any of his votes ever did any damage to Israel which though technically true, it is not for want of trying on Hagel’s behalf and solely due to the fact that Hagel’s vote was among the minority and the vast majority of his fellow Senators supported the United State’s ally Israel. The final nail in the coffin for the Hagel appointment should have come when at least one Republican Senator decided to filibuster the nomination and requested his fellow Republicans support his efforts. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma even wrote a letter asking as much and despite being given the support of a number of fellow Republican Senators; the party supported his efforts only through one cloture vote stalling the confirmation over one little weekend.

After supporting the Senator Inhofe intent to filibuster on a Friday vote, Senator Reid, the Majority Leader of the Senate, was assured by numerous Republicans that they would no longer support any further Republican efforts to filibuster and delay a confirmation vote. What makes the whole cloture vote fold by Republican Senators so disheartening is when the actual vote came to confirm the Hagel appointment as Secretary of Defense, the final vote was insufficient to have overcome the filibuster by a fair margin of 58-41, two votes short of cloture if the Senators had voted their up or down vote during the cloture vote. Despite the four Senators from the Republican side of the aisle who voted to approve the Hagel nomination, the cloture vote of 71-27 reveals that an additional thirteen Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster by their own party than eventually supported the nomination. The question which those whose Senators voted for cloture despite opposing the nomination must be asked is why, knowing that a vote for cloture guaranteed the nomination, did they ignore the sole path to resist this atrocious appointment and fold to the demands of President Obama, Senator Reid and the Democrats? Are they that afraid to stand strong for their beliefs and only vote their conscience when it will not make a difference and when their vote matters simply fold under even the slightest of pressures from the Democrats? What are they afraid of, missing out on some brie and red wine luncheons in the Capital Building or some other social affairs? If they are unable of standing when their votes matter, perhaps they should be replaced. If your Senator was among the four that voted for Hagel, well, at least they were consistent and voted their minds. But if your Senator is among the thirteen who voted for cloture thus guaranteeing a confirmation which they then voted against, you may wish to replace the worms you currently have as the next choice could not be worse. Maybe you can find a real Republican Senatorial candidate to run against the worm in the next primary and send a real conservative Constitutionalist Senator to Washington. Would that be too much to ask? My Senator, he was the one who first stated intent to filibuster and the other supported him and is known as Senator No. I am glad you asked.

Beyond the Cusp

Republicans and the Empty Promise Syndrome

First off we need to define the Empty Promise Syndrome, sometimes called the Wimpy argument quoting the Popeye cartoon character who was always offering to “Pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Those cartoons must have had many Republican politicians earning money on the side as extras on the set as Wimpy never seemed to have any shortage of hamburgers to gulp down. To trace the beginning of the Empty Promise Syndrome infecting Republican politicians we need to go all the way back to 1986 of the Reagan Presidency and the Immigration Reform Bill which legalized at a minimum the three-million illegal aliens residing throughout the United States while promising to address and provide for a system of border enforcement which would make the borders of the United States virtually impenetrable. Currently there exist an estimated eleven- million to possibly over eighteen-million illegal aliens, the euphemistically denoted undocumented workers, citizens without papers, undocumented aliens, and any other of a half dozen terms which dance around but would never use such a harsh and loaded term as illegal. Somehow the agreement to grant citizenship today and impose enforcement tomorrow never quite delivered when tomorrow rolled around, a lot like Wimpy who can never be found on Tuesdays. But there are so many other examples that we had best stick to the two latest in the series.

 

If we were to remember back to just before Thanksgiving and on close to Christmas and then New Years the news reports were all buzzing about some looming doomsday threat called the Fiscal Cliff. The Republicans demanded spending cuts which would be at least equal to any tax increases. They would have preferred, or so they claimed, to have far more of the deficit cut by spending cuts than relying on tax increases. President Obama was insistent that the deficit reduction be levied completely by increased taxes on the rich as they had to be made to pay their fair share. With what were defined in perfect threats from on high was this sequester which would cut spending severely without any concerns for what was necessity and what was less vital and would destroy uncountable programs for the poor, the elderly, the children, the ecology, the Earth, the whatever you cared about and especially the military while ending the great recovery we have been experiencing (though many myself included are loathe to see any solid signs of this recovery unless that is what higher grocery prices are now called). In the end, President Wimpy offered spending cuts by March 1 for taxes on the rich today and the Republicans gave Obama everything he requested and set a new sequester date to force spending cuts as promised.

 

Well, here we are fast approaching March 1 and President Obama is demanding changes in the code resulting in more tax revenue and attempting to reduce spending cuts in any programs or departments with possible exceptions of certain areas the President finds unnecessary such as the Military. It is likely that President Obama would gladly put off any spending cuts forever and simply rearrange the tax codes and eliminate deductable items or at least reduce them or cap them all in order to cut the deficit without cutting spending. Actually, the President has even proposed that his adjustments to tax deductions and the tax codes will produce so much deficit reduction that he will even be able to propose additional spending with the extra funds his accounting has predicted. If the Republicans allow the President to fiddle with the tax code and tax deductions in lieu of the spending cuts promised at the end of last year’s Fiscal Cliff negotiations, they will have forfeited the collateral supposedly granted them of tax increases on the wealthy then for spending cuts and only spending cuts now. This simply means that if the President insists on increasing tax revenues instead of more spending cuts the Republicans should stand loudly upon the promise by the President that this would be the time for spending cuts and only spending cuts. Force the argument to be either the President reaches an agreement on spending cuts or President Obama will be responsible for the sequestration cuts when they occur. Force the choice on President Obama and the Democrats by passing a spending cuts bill which delivers what was promised and announce that the House of Representatives has met their responsibility and produced legislation for rational and safe spending cuts to reduce the deficit and that it is now left to the Democrat controlled Senate and the President to meet their obligations and keep their promises. After all, it is not like the across the board cuts required by the sequestration alternative would actually be anywhere near as debilitating as has been expressed by the fear mongering going on in some of the media and the White House.

 

Then there is another repeat performance being played out in Congress and that is once again immigration reform. This is forming up to be a complete and exact repeat of what occurred during the second half of President Reagan’s time in the White House and many of the exact same players are simply dusting off their old scripts and adjusting a few numbers and going through the same motions using the same terms and offering the same old lies as promises. As the old adage says, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” There is absolutely no reason for the Republicans, and any Democrats who actually care about the rule of law and the safety of the United States, allowing any form of amnesty or forgiveness and allowances to remain inside the borders, let alone working, for the approximately eleven million illegal aliens until there exist in place solid and uncompromising enforcement procedures that include security controls, observation abilities, formidable border barrier systems, and every possible technique applied and utilized to prevent any further illegal infiltrations. There can be no allowance of we will secure the border next Tuesday for total amnesty, or whatever sly and misleading name it be given, today. That was the basic promise which was never intended to be kept in 1986 and will likely be the offer given once again with every single amount of deceit included today.

 

There is one large and very unfortunate problem with the above. The truth be told there are many Republican who desire the lie of enforcement later for allowance and a path to citizenship today as that way they can unfurl the banner of supporting a closed border while not actually getting a closed border. Both sides, the Democrats in order to gather more voters for their candidates and the Republicans to provide less expensive labor for certain industries and businesses, honestly work together to guarantee that those they allowed into the United States are rewarded every so many years with citizenship and at the same time keep the border porous letting in the next wave of voters and workers enter the United States illegally to the benefit of both sides coffers and votes for reelection. One should not be too surprised then when once again we will witness a deceitful front played by those for whom taking a strong stand against illegal immigration and its effects upon the United States once again feign disgust when their votes allowing for immediate forgiveness in any form for the illegal immigrants currently in the country allowing them to remain, keep their jobs, and eventually gain an easy path to full citizenship while enforcement of our laws and control of the border are put aside to be addressed later. Of course later never comes as it is always now and later is, well, later. Do not expect this round to result in anything which falls far from the indecency pulled over on the American people in 1986 when Reagan allowed amnesty on the promise of future enforcement. We are still waiting for that later enforcement and who knows which later will arrive first; the last one or the one we can expect in the near future when the grand immigration compromise is announced with great fanfare and applause all around. My bet is neither enforcement will materialize before the Congress and some future President assure us that these thirty-some-million undocumented citizens will be the last and by allowing them legalization and documentation it will facilitate their soon enforcing our laws and border, and then there will be three soon to come promises.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Conservative Pundits, Please, Enough Already!

All right, I realize that many conservatives would not give President Obama credit for helping a handicapped person across a street safely and would warn that there must have been some conspiracy or that it was a ploy for some nefarious ends involved. I might even agree with some, possibly many, of the insinuations, inferences, and blatant calls for progressive, communist even, programs and laws which curtailed Constitutional rights that could be found buried within his Inaugural Speech. You have disagreements over virtually everything President Obama stands for and represents. That is all fine and worthy of complaint and even opposition if that be your desires. But please, give it a rest when it begins to encroach on pure hatred and unimportant criticisms which sound unbelievably similar in nature to what the most ardent leftists used to say about President Bush and family during his eight years in the White House.

If I have to suffer one more talking head whining about the First Lady’s custom designer dress and the broach holding the halter in place with questions of how much it cost and what better purposes could have been found for those funds I will likely scream. I do not care how much they spent on his celebration on his inauguration as he earned it when he won the election. Enough with what the progressives would have said if Mitt and Ann Romney had worn similar expensive clothes and thrown an equally lavish number of Inaugural celebrations, it does not make your whining sound any less like sour grapes. I do not care what the Progressives would have said about the Romneys had they acted similarly if they had won the election. Are you conservative expounders not constantly claiming how you are superior to the progressives and are the grown-ups who do not stoop to such low levels in political discourse? Well, today, with your inane whining and roiling criticisms over the lavish and extravagant excesses of the Inaugural celebrations, many just seemed to have completely lost their minds over trivial minutia. Just let it go; it will be the Obama’s last one, so live with it. Save your vitriol for actual actions and legislative overreach. Save your venom for their excessive spending which is ongoing and setting baseline budgetary levels which are unsustainable.

The Inaugural celebrations were simply lavish excess because they actually earned it. Allow them their hard earned victory in the election. It is understandable that there may be some sore spots that were scratched causing you pain because it rubbed in that you lost yet another election you thought you had or should have won. It is not President Obama who ran an insufficient campaign that left more of your voters staying home on Election Day than the progressives did. If you had simply gotten as many votes as you had four years earlier you would have likely had won because President Obama also received less votes that he had received four years ago. So, you were just as unpopular with your base as he was with his and that means the result remained the same. For that reason he gets to celebrate and if you were really all grown up you would have just let it be. Sounding like a spoiled brat who is jealous of his sibling because they got the Christmas present that you wanted and you just got a sweater does your credibility no good. You did your causes and supporters absolutely no good today with your petty criticisms and empty jealousies. It is absolutely counter-productive to gripe over such inanities. Save your vitriol for the coming actual damages he will attempt to perform against our Constitution. Keep your ammunition ready to shoot down actual criminal intent through decree by Executive Orders. Lay in wait to trip those agendas hidden piecemeal, slowly being assembled by attaching individual pieces onto vital budgetary and other legislation just as the initial setups for Obama Care was attached and passed with the renewal of the Patriot Act. Be prepared to reveal any and every scheme to shortcut around the delegated authorities of the Congress and the Judicial Branch. Stay your voice as there will be reasons, real and damaging reasons which will call for your voice to rise above the din of the distractions and disguises of misdirection woven into speeches and grand visions used to disguise vile intents. But the petty complaints of lavish celebration is below those claiming to answer to the high calling of protector of the people’s rights and guard of the Constitutional limitations of the excesses of governmental power which will be attempted over the coming four years. Remember the boy who cried wolf was ignored simply because he abused the right to cry warnings simply by misuse of that right. You are crying excess when it matters little. Save the cry of alarm for when the damages really amount to something worthy of crying wolf or your future warnings will fall on deaf ears. Decrying that the parties thrown to celebrate his last Inauguration were excessive, please, get real.

Beyond the Cusp