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Conservatives
Rob wrote a great piece last night eviscerating David Shephard’s condemnation of conservatives who actually stand on principles on the Bull Elephant. You should really go read Rob’s fisk. He uses big words, and he didn’t drop the F-bomb even once! (Note: this is why I will never write for an actual news source or political site again. Too much effort to constrain my cursing.)
Shephard, whose claim to fame is apparently being a lobbyist in Richmond, claims that the House Freedom Caucus and its “conservative” members were never meant to be legislators, because they apparently never influence policy (Except for tanking the GOP’s sh-t show of a health care bill, of course. You’re welcome.) They should just hang out in think tanks and attend luncheons, proclaims a snot-nosed millennial whose contribution to the economy is lobbying and consulting.
If my eyes rolled back any harder, I’d need a pair of salad tongs and a team of Navy SEALs to retrieve them.
And that’s why, Shephard claims, Trump voters hate these guys, mmkay?
Because apparently people who want to examine legislation that has the power to affect millions of Americans and significantly impact our economy by using actual economic principles and rational thought don’t belong in government.
Rob rightfully excoriated this dick weasel.
The Trump voter, for the most part, is driven by emotion rather than logic. Trump, to his credit, seized on the undercurrent of frustration with business as usual in Washington, and rode it, against all expectations, including mine, to the White House. But let us not kid ourselves, Trump has little idea, even from moment to moment, of what he actually wants to ‘get done’. All he is interested in is ‘winning’. He is an ideologically unmoored populist. Steve Bannon, his chief political guru, has little ideological compass himself, and lacks the depth of knowledge to develop one. …And this is the guy who had the unmitigated gall to tell House conservatives in a meeting this past week “Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.” This administration will never be an effective leader for conservative principles as it stands right now.
I have, for the most part, avoided partisan discussion on this blog, choosing instead to focus on particular issues objectively and examine them from both sides. There’s a reason for this. Partisans focus on party. As Shephard shows, they care little for actual principle, and care only about advancing the party brand. Even when the party elite try to advance pure sh-t legislation that the majority of Americans recognize as dreck, winning is more important than what’s good for the country.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not only a Republican problem. The majority of Americans also opposed ObamaCare, but the legisleeches back then cared more about passing legacy legislation than ensuring the good of the nation. But apparently Republicans have learned nothing from that disaster.
It’s apparently more important for them to appear to be keeping their campaign promises than to actually be keeping them. Winning. That’s how you win in politics. You manipulate public perception into believing you’re doing something, and you claim victory. It’s not about America. It’s about your party winning in Congress. So yes, when intelligent people step in and put a damper on your plans with actual facts and figures, you have no choice but to malign and bully them.
What really gets me is that Shephard has so little self awareness, that he actually thinks denigrating legislators who analyze legislation and consider its fiscal implications as worthless and “a waste of a desk and a chair,” while wrapping himself in the “conservative” mantle somehow reflects positively on him and the vapid establishment squishes who pride themselves on having no principles, but “winning” at the polls.
The Trump voters work for a living, he says in an obsequious attempt to lick the taints of the ignorant, as if the members of the House Freedom Caucus have done no real work in their lives.
Mark Meadows, the current Chairman, started a small restaurant in North Carolina, and later sold it to start a successful real estate development endeavor in Florida. Yeah, what a failure!
Brian Babin of Texas is a dentist. Obviously, he can’t relate to the working man.
Rod Blum – with his degrees in finance and business administration obviously has nothing to contribute to the conversation about legislation that would affect this nation’s people and economy, and neither does economist Dave Brat.
The caucus includes businessmen, military veterans, doctors, realtors, small business owners, as well as lawyers. Obviously, they have nothing to contribute to the health care legislation debate, and they certainly don’t have anything in common with those Trump voters who work for a living, right, jackass?
Conservatives should not be defined by the number of notches they carve in the “win” column. Conservatives should specifically defined by their principles and ideology, which shouldn’t changed based on the way the political wind is blowing. If Shephard is correct, and the typical Trump voter wants results that will “improve our country,” they should be thanking the members of the House Freedom Caucus for ensuring that the GOP’s dumpster fire health care legislation, which did nothing to reduce government dependence and kept much of what Americans hated about ObamaCare in the first place firmly in place, never saw the light of day.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus were elected for a reason. They were open and transparent about their views, and their constituents selected them to represent their views in Congress. Maybe they were tired of politicians who told them what they wanted to hear, and then fell right in line with the usual bulls-it once they got to Washington. There’s a reason they sent the calculating, ambitious, unprincipled Republican Eric Cantor home in favor of the educated, passionate, pro-freedom economist Dave Brat, despite Brat’s considerable disadvantage in the fundraising department. There’s only so many times you can betray the principles you claim to hold, before your constituents say, “ENOUGH!”
Congress needs more ideologically committed conservatives (and liberals), not fewer. We need less notches on our political bedposts and more actual wins. We need people who stand behind what they believe and rely on knowledge and experience, not their FEELZ, and who won’t be threatened and intimidated into backing down and doing anything less than what they objectively understand to be good for the country. They shouldn’t care that some carnival barker threatens to primary them, because this shouldn’t be a career from which to profit, but an honor to serve the people who put them in office.
The fact that these are men who stood up and opposed a bill that would have been awful for the country despite attempts to threaten and intimidate them speaks volumes about their love of their country and their respect for their constituents and yanks the curtain open on the puppetmasters, shining a stark spotlight on their lack of values and respect for America.
Trump promised us during the election that we would win so much, we’d get tired of winning.
Perhaps our definitions of “winning” need a tweak.
Filed under: America, politics
Tagged: American Health Care Act, conservatives, Donald Trump, Faux Conservatives, GOP, health care, House Freedom Caucus, Republicans
Source: http://thelibertyzone.us/2017/03/26/conservatives/
