Vote Republican, Even If It Hurts

It's become the mother of all political clichés: Every election, we are told, is the most important of our lifetime. If our side doesn't win, it's 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, rivers and seas boiling, human-sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria – or worse.

While it's hard to rank these biennial slug-fests, given the rot that's eating away at the soul of our nation, 2014 is right up there.

Will there be any break on Obama's increasingly despotic reign during his last two years in office, or will Harry Reid and his cohorts continue to provide cover for the presidential putsch?

Most analysts are predicting the 2014 election will give Republicans a slight majority in the Senate next year. The New York Times gives the GOP a 64% chance of taking the Senate.

But nothing is guaranteed. The outcome could depend on last-minute spending, which party has the better ground game, and how much fraud the party of illegal aliens and the graveyard vote can get away with.

Starting with 45 seats, Republicans need to pick up six more to gain a bare majority. Two open seats currently held by Democrats are considered likely pick-ups. The Democratic incumbent in Louisiana will probably lose. Of the nine toss-ups, three are currently Republican seats. If Republicans hold those and take the three they're slated to win, they'll need only one of six toss-ups.

That only sounds easy. In Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner has a one-point lead over incumbent Senator Mark Udall. In Iowa, Republican Joni Ernst leads her opponent by 2.2 points. In Arkansas, the Republican challenger leads the incumbent Democrat by 2 points – all within the margin of error.

With so much at stake this year, the toss-ups could well be squeakers. In the meantime, we're getting lectures from conservatives castigating 2012 stay-at-homes.

"Why did we lose in 2012?" asks the typical e-mail I get at least daily. "Because millions of delusional, self-defeating conservatives, who were disappointed by Romney, were AWOL on Election Day, they helped to re-elect the man who's destroying our Republic.'"

This argument relieves the Republican establishment from all responsibility for nominating a clunk like Romney, and Mitt from practically throwing away the nomination by running an abysmal campaign.

Still, this year at least, voting Republican as the default position makes sense.

Unless the GOP candidate has you running for the toilet bowl (like Charlie Baker, RINO candidate for Massachusetts governor, whose bucket list includes performing a partial-birth abortion while simultaneously presiding over a same-sex wedding), conservatives should vote Republican, even if it hurts. I did in 2008 and 2012, though the experience was excruciating, I can assure you.

Let's start with a hard case – Scott Brown, former Massachusetts Senator now running for the Senate as a Republican in New Hampshire.

During his two years in the Senate, Brown (who won a special election in 2010 with Tea Party support) was a huge disappointment. His rating from the American Conservative Union was 50% – one of the lowest for any Republican Senator.

On the other hand, according to the Congressional Quarterly, his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted with the president 98% of the time. She is Obama's Topo Gigio. ("Oh, Barack, I love you!") The latest CNN poll has them in a statistical dead-heat – Shaheen 49%, Brown 47%, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.

The choice isn't between an authentic conservative and a typical Democrat, but a 50% conservative and a 98% hard-core leftist. Representing conservative New Hampshire, Brown would probably have a better voting record than he did as the junior senator from the Bay State.

More importantly, he'll be part of the Republican Senate majority. That means the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee passes from Patrick Leahy (lifetime ACU rating 6%) to Charles Grassley (lifetime ACU rating 83%).

It also means no more rubber-stamping of Obama's judicial mutants – no more Sonia ("wise Latina woman") Sotomayors. Ruth Bader Ginsberg – 81, ailing and having an unnatural relationship with the Constitution – won't wait to see who's elected president in 2016, but will likely retire next year. Only a Republican Senate will stop Obama from filling the vacancy with a Ginsberg-clone 30 years her junior.

Grassley is eager to launch investigations to compliment House inquiries – including Fast and Furious and the IRS harassment of conservatives.

Conservative hero Jeff Sessions will chair the powerful Budget Committee. Expect renewed attacks on ObamaCare and proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax system.

Bob Corker (the kindest thing he can say about Obama is that he's an "unreliable ally") gets the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and John McCain will chair Armed Services. Besides a push for new weapons systems, look for hearings on Obama's blunders which helped to foster the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

With both houses in Republican hands, Obama will get writer's cramp using his veto pen. If contested programs are riders on appropriations bills, the president will have to explain why he risked shutting down the government over the Keystone Pipeline – because it's crucial to maintain our dependence on Middle East oil?

In an opinion column in the October 21 Washington Post ("The Catastrophe that a GOP-controlled Congress would bring") Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, sputters:

"What happens when they (the Republican majority in Congress) send him a bill to prevent a default on our debt at the 11th. hour, attached to a bill that ravages (reforms) Social Security? The Republican Party will gain the power to force the president to choose between impossible options."

Even though self-styled progressives think Obama hasn't moved far enough toward a Soviet America, Vanden Heuvel writes: "It is madness to suggest that little will change if Republicans take the Senate. A lot will change, and the change will be the worse for women, immigrants, workers and the environment" (feminists, illegal aliens and global-warming cultists). "A Republican Senate, working with a Republican House, will be a wrecking crew."

Still, the alternative to a GOP victory in this year's Senate elections is more judicial nominations from Hell, the continued implementation of ObamaCare (millions more losing their private insurance), a sweeping amnesty (with crime, disease, unemployment and terrorism for all), taking a civil-liberties approach to containing Ebola, and accelerating attacks on Israel by the Grand Mufti of D.C.

It will also mean that Democrats will have won three of the last four elections – sending the GOP into 2016 dispirited and disorganized.

Winston Churchill said of England's victories over the Nazis in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

I've been disappointed too often by the GOP to expect much from a Republican Congress. But the end of the beginning is better than the alternative—the unimpeded march toward the abyss of hope and change.

(Threadwide Ping)

Savage Beast:
I think the Republicans in Congress are scared out of their wits of Left-wing America and the Democrat politicians it has empowered.
[…]
I think the reasons the Republicans have gone over to the Dark Side are twofold: (1) Republican politicians are afraid of the Left because they think that's where most of the power is and--among their other fears--they fear for their jobs, careers, and financial assets, and (2) Some of them have been influenced by the Left and are stupid enough to believe some or all of its assertions.
Of course these people should be kicked out of office forthwith.

TwelveOfTwenty:
And if we can get the electorate to nominate and vote for Conservatives instead of RINOs, some of this just might actually happen. Yes, of course I admit there are RINOs, but that's who their constituents are voting for.

In the mean time, our choices are to give more power to the Democrats, or take what we can get.

And the underlined is where my problem with you thesis resides: the Republican party has shown us, by its actions, that it getting power is not equivalent to us getting power. Their [in]actions are illustrated by Jesus in a parable which, IMO, also shows the proper response to them:

(Matthew 25:14-30)
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

We gave the Republicans the House, what have they done with it?
Before that we gave them the Presidency [and the Congress], what did they do with it?

Why should I believe that now, after a decade of giving them power, they will finally do my will?
To assert that I must vote Republican, at this point, is to assert that I must reward unfaithfulness, deceit, and treachery.

READ THIS:

Why do news organizations and writers of commentary get things so wrong about what happened in the McDaniel – Cochran showdown in the Mississippi Supreme Court this week? In the Clarion Ledger article cited by HotAir writer Jazz Shaw (“Chris McDaniel appeal rejected in state supreme court”, October 25, 2014), we are told that the Supreme Court “[upheld] a lower court decision that McDaniel waited too long to file the challenge of his loss.” But the court did no such thing: in fact, three justices said there was no deadline at all, and three claimed that McDaniel had missed the deadline. Justice Randolph, who agreed that there was no deadline at all, voted to throw out the case based upon a spurious appeal to the “political question doctrine.” As an outsider observing the McDaniel – Cochran primary election and its aftermath, I’ve been distressed to see the slip-shod analysis, partisan railing, and legal sophistry that have derailed what should have been a straightforward election contest.I’m not a Tea Party supporter, and I didn’t vote for either side in this controversy. But for over twenty years, I’ve been engaged in conducting election investigations and contests. I conducted the investigation that lead to the indictment and conviction of our local Circuit Clerk for fabricating absentee ballots. I’ve investigated countless elections and directed many election contests, managing to help overturn half a dozen in court along the way. I’ve already published a detailed analysis of the pleadings before the Mississippi Supreme Court in this election contest, which can be read here. The bottom line is this: the election code, as it stands today, contains no deadline for filing a contest in a state-wide primary. Nobody who reads the two parallel sections would infer that there is a deadline in this case. There are no annotated cases showing that such a deadline exists or has been grafted into the statute by the courts. The Secretary of State, our chief elections officer, stated that there is no such deadline. Indeed, the notorious Kellum case (which ingrafted a 20 day deadline into the previous incarnation of the current law) was dropped from the statutory commentary by both major publishers of the Mississippi Election Code, whose editors apparently thought it was no longer relevant to the modern version of the statute. That’s what makes the criticism of McDaniel’s attorneys so disingenuous. They have been derided as lousy lawyers, and treated with contempt by much of the commentariat, when all they did was to follow the plain reading of the election code as it applies in this case. Half the Supreme Court agrees with them! That contempt appears to me to spring from a visceral dislike for the Tea Party movement. The partisanship is so strong that anybody who helps or associates or works with McDaniel must be subjected to smears, catcalls, and degrading comments. Of course, this goes both ways, with Tea Partiers often stooping to similar attacks against Cochran supporters. Particularly appalling was Justice Randolph’s claim that the case should be dismissed because of the “political question doctrine” involving how parties ought to guard against cross-party raiding. That issue was not the matter under appeal, and wasn’t briefed by the parties. What Randolph did was take an issue that impacted only one aspect of the election contest, decide that it was fatal to the entire contest, and then cast his vote to dismiss the entire contest, all without giving McDaniel the right to respond or refute his conclusion which, procedurally, came out of the blue. Tea Party supporter or not, this case ought to bring to mind those aspects of the legal system that many people find so contemptible: the reliance upon the legal artifice, the long-lost court decision, the unjust technicality that overturns plain justice and derails a fair opportunity for the weak and the powerless to finally get at the truth in a court of law. We’ve seen this dynamic play out over and over again in our political system, and no matter what party or brand you may be, it stinks all the way around. Jonathan Swift, writing in “Gulliver’s Travels,” remarked upon this very same contemptible aspect of the courts and the law: “It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.” Thanks to this legal sleight of hand, now we’ll never know just how pervasive the illegal voting was in the Republican primary run-off for Senate in Mississippi. McDaniel has presented strong evidence that, at least, several thousand illegal votes were cast in a race where the margin was less than 8000 votes. Were there enough illegal votes cast to require the nomination to be set aside? Thanks to a sleazy precedent that twists the plain reading of the law into something it does not say, that question will never be answered. If only the members of the public knew how often illegal votes decide the outcome of our elections, more of them would begin to call into question the fundamental integrity of our democratic process. As a professional who has examined the inside of the election mechanism up close for so long, none of this surprises me.

But this time, it makes me very sad to realize, for the first time, just how easily partisan prejudice and legal trickery can bludgeon to death a valiant effort to get to the bottom of it all.

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