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Senator Ted Cruz on the GOP’s Surrender Politics
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100% hits the digital pages of POLITICO to take the GOP to task yet again for its strategy of pre-emptive surrender. If you’ve followed our chronicling of Failure Theater here at RedState, you won’t be surprised by the information as by the fact that this is a sitting senator and a candidate for president saying it.
What happens in politics when one side is absolutely committed to its principles, willing to fight for them no matter the cost, and the other side reflexively surrenders on every issue? We have modern-day Washington.
Today, President Barack Obama fights relentlessly for his liberal priorities. Like the Terminator, he never gives up, he never stops. And Republican leadership responds to every challenge by surrendering at the outset.
…
Surely, you might think, Republicans can use different “tactics” and accomplish something meaningful without risking a government shutdown.
Alas, no. In today’s partisan Washington, there are only two important kinds of votes: show votes on legislation that has no chance of becoming law and votes on legislation that “must pass.” (A third kind of vote—growing government and worsening the deficit—occurs as well. These votes succeed because Democrats and Republican leadership agree that expanding corporate welfare and cronyism helps the reelection of career politicians of both parties.)
The leadership loves show votes. They will schedule a vote on just about anything, confident that Senate Democrats will vote party-line and filibuster over and over again until Republicans retreat. Leadership wants and expects grassroots voters to be satisfied with these meaningless show votes.
The other type of vote is on “must-pass” legislation. Typically, these votes consist of continuing-resolution votes, omnibus appropriations votes and debt-ceiling votes. In short, “must-pass” legislation is where the rubber meets the road.
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And, notably, after President Obama forced the 2013 shutdown over Obamacare, predictions of electoral calamity proved false; instead, Republicans won a landslide victory in 2014.
When Reagan was president, there were eight partial shutdowns, including six before his historic 1984 reelection. The world didn’t end. But that’s what happens sometimes when a leader fights for his principles. The alternative—Republican leadership’s current strategy—is to surrender on everything and leave Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) 14% as the de facto leader of the Senate. We can do better.
I’m not going to quote more because you should really read the whole thing.
Senator Cruz’s analysis, as usual, is exactly correct. The GOP leadership is interested in nothing beyond getting re-elected. The battles they fight are for the benefit of we rubes in the cheap seats. They come out and talk pro-life and small government but when they go back to Congress they vote to allow 20-week old babies, babies that could be viable, hacked to bits. They vote to fund the corrupt Ex-Im Bank. They pour billions into the highway bill which is one of the most egregious examples of legal bribery and influence peddling available.
It isn’t that the GOP can’t win, it is that they are losers and so losing comes pretty naturally to them. These filibusters could be broken very easily by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 58%. He could do what Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) 14% did and eliminate the filibuster altogether. He could simply refuse to act on any Executive Branch appointments unless and until Obama agrees to sign various pieces of legislation and turn over the secret side deals to the Iran nuclear deal. And let’s be clear, there is absolutely nothing that is passing the Congress that is making the nation safer or more prosperous so bringing it to a screeching halt is not harmful. McConnell and Boehner could fund the government by short term continuing resolution which would make great fiscal sense as it would freeze federal outlays. But they won’t do that because they’d rather have the little boy’s seat at Obama’s table than stand up on their hind legs and act like a man.
The post Senator Ted Cruz on the GOP’s Surrender Politics appeared first on RedState.
Source: http://www.redstate.com/2015/09/24/senator-ted-cruz-gops-surrender-politics/
