A Lust For Betrayal

by JASmius



I am consistently told by some of my Tea Party compatriots that political realism doesn't escape the entirety of TP ranks, that most TPers aren't fratricidal maniacs who want nothing more than to burn the Republican Party to the ground, that most of them actually can wait until they can permanently exile themselves to the political wilderness while the corpse of the Old American Republic moves beyond both rigor mortis and resurrection so they can spent the rest of their days patting themselves on the back for how "pure" they are and how they "showed the RINOs who's boss".  I want to believe that.  And there is not inconsiderable evidence to back up this reassuring assertion.

And yet there are blitherings like the one I just came across from a Facebook commenter:

Why would [Barack Obama] need to do amnesty himself when ass-kisser[s] Boehner and McConnell will walk into his office, "in the spirit of compromise," and capitulate? History tells us the Republicans were completely derelict in their duty and promises made which allowed this turd of a president to walk into the oval office and trample on what was left. Why do you believe it will be different when history dictates more of the same?

Not to be....unkind, but that is lunatic doggerel from "Why" to "same".

First of all, Speaker John Boehner (ACU rating: 87) and now-(presumptive) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (ACU rating: 92) are, and always have been, staunch conservatives whose leadership tenures began with the demoralizing task of trying to sift through the blackened wreckage of the 2006 and 2008 elections and at the same time fight a hopeless rearguard action against a rampaging Marxist-Alinskyist tyrant whose lawlessness neutered Congress of any and all constitutional means of reining him in.  Not one iota of which has ever been Boehner's or McConnell's fault, but for which "tighty-righties" who took a walk on the GOP in the 2006 midterms do bear significant responsibility.

Second, I have seen little or no evidence that either Boehner or McConnell have any inclination to enact "comprehensive immigration reform" - in fact, Boehner had a golden opportunity to do so this summer after the Donk Senate rammed it through last year, and despite all the paranoid TP rumors to the contrary, it never happened.  But even if they did possess a secret amnesty fetish, they're not also inclined to commit political suicide, which is what legalizing tens of millions of illegals for Barack Obama would constitute.  It would be utter insanity, and Boehner and McConnell are no more insane than they are treacherous.  And indeed, people who actually watch and follow politics rather than flee from it to self-righteously wallow in masochistic pre-emptive defeatism all agree that amnesty is a dead letter for the foreseeable future.

And for the trifecta, just exactly how, and when, did "Republicans....completely derelict....their duty and [make] promises....which allowed this turd of a president to walk into the oval office and trample on what was left"? To quote Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson on his supposed "lack of blackness," "I don't even know what that means."  Does this go back to the 2006 midterms?  What promises did they make then that they didn't keep?  Sure, they spent too much, but that didn't make the Obama/Pelosi/(G)Reid axis inevitable.  But so-called conservatives shivving their congressional majorities in the hexaribs certainly did.  And to what end?  Logarithmically vaster levels of spending and debt, currency debasement, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the Obama Doctrine.  How was this an improvement over "RINOism"?  Seems like an awfully steep, and insanely counterproductive, a price to pay just to "teach the GOP a lesson".

It's much the same pet peeve that I have with the oxymoronic term "progressive Republican".  Can we just all agree that this is a mythical creature on a par with fairies, elves, and Hobbits?  Certainly there are a handful of moderate Republicans, but this simply means that they're unprincipled deal-cutters, not hostile ideologues.  And I'm sorry to have to deliver another dose of political reality, my Tea Party friends - well, no, I'm really not - but there will always be a handful of "RINOs," all the more so in a governing majority party.  It sucks; I don't like it any more than you do.  But it is inevitable.

And, just for the record, and demarcating the ideological spectrum as follows....

CONSERVATIVE: 81%-100%
MODERATELY CONSERVATIVE: 61%-80%
MODERATE: 41%-60%
MODERATELY LIBERAL: 21%-40%
LIBERAL (or "progressive"): 0%-20%

....the GOP (per 2013 ACU numbers) distributed as follows:

SENATE: 36 conservatives/moderate conservatives (80%), 7 moderates, and 2 moderate "progressives" (Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the former of whom is from, well, Maine, aka "the Florida of Canada," and the latter of whom didn't even run as a Republican after losing her 2010 GOP primary to Tea Partier Joe Miller and then did a write-in end-run on the strength of Democrat cross-overs).  So I'll give y'all those two.  But there are nine conservative reinforcements coming, of which five were or soon will be elevated from the House (Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Steven Daines of Montana), all but Capito with confirmed Tea Party-friendly voting records.  So are conservatives still a minority in the Senate?  Yes - but not by much.

HOUSE: 193 conservatives/moderate conservatives (82%), 35 moderates, and 6 moderate "progressives".  The latter are/were Michael Grimm, Chris Gibson, Peter King, all of New York; David Joyce of Ohio; and Pat Meehan and Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.  Or States, other than in Joyce's case, from which the presence of the nearly extinct breed of Rockefeller Republicans is less than entirely stunning.  Again, are conservatives a minority in the House?  With the currently-confirmed 13 conservative reinforcements on the way, and splitting the difference on the moderate contingent, actually.....no, they're not.

So, my Tea Party detractor, congratulations, I've unearthed seven eight "progressive" Republicans (as the term is rationally defined) out of three hundred and one in the incoming 114th Congress - or 2.3% 2.7%.  Have fun making a fifth column out of that "cabal".  The rest of us will be setting about the task of using Tuesday's tsunami as a stepping stone to regaining the White House in 2016 and finally getting accomplished what we all (supposedly) want in the years beyond.

Sounds like a lot more fun - and useful - than wallowing in self-righteous, preemptive, masochistic defeatism, if you ask me.