Kentucky cockroaches:
The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23rd: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health [cartel] — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from ObamaCare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies.
The application said Congress employed just forty-five [out of tens of thousands] people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the ObamaCare exemption, it was clear that someone in Congress had falsified the document in order to make lawmakers and their staff eligible for taxpayer subsidies provided under the [cartel] for small-business employees.
But until Vitter got a green light from the Small Business Committee to subpoena the unredacted application from the District of Columbia health [cartel], it would be impossible to determine who in Congress gave it a stamp of approval. When Vitter asked Republicans on his committee to approve the subpoena, however, he was unexpectedly stonewalled. [emphases added]
Wow. Just, wow. The questions abound: Who approved this hilariously fraudulent application? A Republican? A Democrat? And if the latter, why in the blue hell would the Senate majority want to protect him or her or them from the light of public scrutiny and accountability? Seems to go a ways beyond "Failure Theater," it seems to me.
But that's just the appetizer; whet your palates for the main course:
With nine Democrats on the committee lined up against the proposal, the chairman needed the support of all ten Republicans to issue the subpoena. But, though it seems an issue tailor-made for the tea-party star and Republican presidential candidate, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) refused to lend his support. And when the Louisiana senator set a public vote for April 23rd, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies got involved.
“For whatever reason, leadership decided they wanted that vote to be 5–5, all Republicans, to give Senator Paul cover,” one high-ranking committee staffer tells National Review. “So they worked at a member level to change the votes of otherwise supportive senators.” Four Republicans — senators Mike Enzi [Wyoming], James Risch [Idaho], Kelly Ayotte [New Hampshire], and Deb Fischer [Nebraska] — had promised to support Vitter, but that would soon change. [emphases added]
Senator Risch offered some lame excuse about not wanting Senator Vitter's investigation to take away from his committee work. Senator Enzi defiantly doubled down on the "I'm a small business" bullshit. Senators Ayotte and Fischer had the good sense to decline comment.
But Senator Paul, oh my God, Senator Paul. Isn't he supposed to be a Tea Party Avenger? Isn't he supposed to be a small-government "libertarian"? Isn't he supposed to be "anti-Washington"? Isn't he running for president of the United f'ing States? Has he lost his ever-lovin' mind?
And for all you Paulnuts out there who've taken exception to my decided lack of enthusiasm for Senator Paul's delusional presidential ambitions, what have you got to say for your hero now, huh? Do you still "Stand With Rand"? Or are you going to make BS excuses for him and claim it's all Senator McConnell's eeeeeevil doing?
Yes, that was a rhetorical question.
But you'd better start rethinking that blind loyalty, because here was Senator Paul's alibi:
It wasn’t until after the vote that Paul shared his reasoning. “Senator Paul opposes allowing Congress to exempt themselves from any legislation,” an aide told the Conservative Review. “To that end, yesterday, he reintroduced his proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit Congress from passing any law that exempts themselves. Senator Paul prefers this option over a partisan cross-examination of Congressional staff.”
But a constitutional amendment is a long shot that would take years, and it hardly precluded an investigation of congressional corruption here and now.
“That’s absurd,” says Robert Moffit, the director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “You don’t need a constitutional amendment to get a subpoena . . . I don’t know where he’s coming from.” [emphasis added]
Oh, I think we do. Rand Paul has been assimilated. Or, put another way, "We are all 'establishmentarians' now."
I, and we, can never be "done" with the Republican Party, Ace. For weal or for woe, it's the only political vehicle conservatism has, and we have to make the best of it or give up and let America stay destroyed.
But the GOP needs an Orkin-sized fumigation from top to bottom, while simultaneously keeping the Democrats out of power. And that's going to be one helluva balancing act.
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