It’s not the GOP’s fault that it’s useless, but it is useless
How many people who voted for Mitt Romney or actual conservatives for Senate and the House want their Social Security and Medicare left untouched? How many of them give lip service to a flat tax proposal but would freak if their various tax credits and deductions were eliminated? How many of them talk a good game about getting rid of the Department of Education but would freak if aid to their kid’s district were cut?
Of course Republicans are going to respond to these people. But these people who support all sorts of government spending while talking about “the damn government” and taxes are the problem.
It’s simply too much to expect a political party to stand up to voters and say, “no”. Politics is a market and voters have become consumers. If the GOP as a whole or an individual candidate won’t give the customer what they want, they will find someone else to do business with. Consumers don’t care about the health of the places they shop, they care that they get what they want. If Brand A doesn’t have it but Brand B does, who cares so long as their needs are met.
What America needs is a movement that will not just tell people “no” but also convince them to stop being a consumer of government and look at themselves as they were meant to…an owner of the government.
Blowback
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Fair enough.
What IS their fault is that they refuse to even put up a peep.
MelonCollie on January 16, 2013 at 8:03 PM
Don’t worry – it’s coming … when the entitlement state falls, there’s gonna be hundreds of millions of pi$$ed off people in the streets with pitchforks. Wouldn’t want to be a lawmaker, or a journalist when that day comes.
HondaV65 on January 16, 2013 at 8:05 PM
The GOP fossils including Hastert the Second and Frist the Second are precisely the fault as was the rehashed Rovian tactics which screwed up 2012 as those had 2006.
The landslide of 2010 was largely the making of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin… the momentum from which was completely squandered by two full years of doing practically nothing with the nation’s first sight of their new speaker of the house being a crying spell.
viking01 on January 16, 2013 at 8:06 PM
How would the Republican party know this? Have they ever actually tried this as some point?
sharrukin on January 16, 2013 at 8:08 PM
That’s rather optimistic.
If or when that day comes I hope that you’re correct and that the American spirit isn’t largely dead. I suspect however that we’ll see on one hand a majority of people demanding an even more expansive government and intrusive elite ruling class to fix the mess and on the other people return to the principles of federalism to pick up the pieces and move on.
gwelf on January 16, 2013 at 8:13 PM
Like a third armpit.
CurtZHP on January 16, 2013 at 8:19 PM
Well of course there will be splintered groups. However, I don’t think ANY group is going to be pleased with lawmakers and journalists who conspired to bring down the Republic.
HondaV65 on January 16, 2013 at 8:31 PM
Great point. I read many on this site that complain about govnment – and rightfully so – but you mention cutting foreign aid and DOD spending and they get pissed. News flash to those tha love endless interventions – we can’t afford it anymore. Let South Korea guard its own borders, let Turkey provide its own missle defense, let Afghanistan build its own school that the Taliban will eventually destroy, let foreign regimes pay their owns bills because the American taxpayer shouldn’t be subsidizing them.
MoreLiberty on January 16, 2013 at 8:34 PM
This is a pretty stupid article. Drew is just projecting his thoughts onto others and assuming that he’s correct. He isn’t.
The GOP sucks because the GOP leadership sucks and the rank and file are, generally, too cowardly to take on the Weeper or any of the other turds. The re-election of the Weeping Boner proves that beyond any doubt – and that ridiculous election had nothing to do with anything Drew is making up for this article.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on January 16, 2013 at 8:37 PM
Except that you can cut all of that stuff and it won’t make a bit of difference. Social Security and Medicare. Nothing. Else. Matters. That’s what has to be dealt with and it won’t be. Not when over 2/3 of self- proclaimed Tea Partiers won’t agree to cuts in those entitlements.
Dukeboy01 on January 16, 2013 at 8:39 PM
cultures and countries fail…there are no guarantees…and it is not the Republicans fault.
if electorates can’t/won’t figure out that leftists/Dems/Unons/Media willfully misinform and lie to them, well it won’t end well.
Walter Russell Mead has a piece on the post-blue model in San Bernardino, basically a failed city…strangled by union pensions.
Oddly, the left, the good government folks, the bleeding hearts, never ask the unions to ‘sacrifice’ for the good of the whole. No. As with any union, the single goal is to extract as much as possible from their hosts…and protect the most senior members.
We will see…public pensions will be the ultimate test. If the rioting teachers and police can be brought to heel, we may have a hope. Otherwise the math is bad.
r keller on January 16, 2013 at 8:44 PM
MediCAID matters more than both of those – and MediCAID is exactly what is being supercharged under ObamaScare to take over everything. The money taken out of MediCare would have been fine (just for the fact that MediCare needs to be gotten under control) but the fact that it was used to expand MediCAID made it totally unacceptable.
SS and MediCare need to be dealt with seriously, but MediCAID needs to be seriously reduced FIRST, as it is the most un-Constitutional and the most aggressive of the programs. SS and MediCare, at least, have the argument that they are somewhat supported by FICA and people have to pay into them. MediCAID is a pure feral government giveaway (for an un-Constitutional expenditure at the feral level) and it is the most dangerous cancer in the budget. Not SS or MediCare, but MediCAID, which is the reason why BarkyCare HAD TO BE REPEALED and why the Weeping Boner and his gang of cowards totally shirked their real responsibilities when they didn’t use the many CRs and debt-ceiling “negotiations” in 2011 to insure the repeal of the most anti-American, un-Constitutional, retarded POS legislation ever. The idiots don’t even talk about repealing BarkyCare anymore – partly because that turd Romney was the nominee and he basically liked it, save a few lines he wanted to change.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on January 16, 2013 at 8:46 PM
blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/15/blue-storm-ravages-california-city/
oh, and don’t forget to read the part about the gangs and the dead animals left in the street.
r keller on January 16, 2013 at 8:47 PM
If the world were just a collection of Switzerlands, I’d be ok with temporarily eliminating the Pentagon as an academic exercise to demonstrate the folly of attempting to use the defense budget as a piggy bank for the welfare state. But, it’s not. Iran has centrifuges spinning and China is expanding in the Pacific.
The Count on January 16, 2013 at 8:49 PM
At least the Constitution calls for Defense.
The Departments of Educatin’, HHS, Labor, Energy, Transportation, Homeland Security, and the tyrants at EPA? Nope.
viking01 on January 16, 2013 at 8:51 PM
Rodney Alexander (La.), Lou Bartletta (Pa.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), Charles Dent (Pa.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Michael Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Rodney Frelinghuyse (N.J.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Michael Grimm (N.Y.), Richard Hanna (N.Y.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), Peter King (N.Y.), Leonard Lance (N.J.), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Frank Lucas (Okla.), Tom Marino (Pa.), Buck McKeon (Calif.), Pat Meehan (Pa.), Tom Reed (N.Y.), David Reichert (Wash.), Harold Rogers (Ky.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Jon Runyon (N.J.), Jim Shimkus (Ill.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Don Young (Alaska), C.W. Bill Young (Fla).
Bmore on January 16, 2013 at 9:00 PM
I know, right? It’s actually a pretty good point, albeit sad as hell.
Our Congresscritters need to trust that we sent them to Capitol Hill to pass legislation that we want, not that the opposing party in Washington has convinced them that everybody wants. Likewise, we need to be able to trust that they won’t just go off the reservation once they get up there. It’s a bubble up there.
We’re not electing leaders, apparently, just empty suits with pathological power-seeking personalities. If they’re doing a job, we need to scare them into wanting to keep it, which is something that we as an electorate have failed to do. We have let our representatives down because we didn’t roll up the newspaper and rub their faces in what they did once they did it. Apparently, we need to have our faces rubbed in big government, as it is a steaming pile of our own making.
mintycrys on January 16, 2013 at 9:11 PM
The Second Amendment is being shredded and these azhats are silent.
trs on January 16, 2013 at 9:24 PM