Posted on 03/27/2020 7:25:45 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
President Donald Trump berated Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Friday, demanding the Republicans throw him out of the party for obstructing the massive coronavirus rescue package.
“WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
…& costly. Workers & small businesses need money now in order to survive. Virus wasn’t their fault. It is “HELL” dealing with the Dems, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the “big picture” done. 90% GREAT! WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2020
The president described the famous Republican libertarian as a “third rate Grandstander” who was obstructing the bill.
“He just wants the publicity. He can’t stop it, only delay, which is both dangerous and costly,” Trump wrote.
Massie is expected to force a roll call vote in Congress on the $2 trillion emergency funding bill, requiring members of Congress to rush back to Washington instead of passing the bill unanimously by a voice vote.
If Massie demands a quorum, 216 members of Congress are needed to return to Washington to pass the bill.
The Kentucky congressman shared an image of text from the Constitution on Thursday, suggesting that he would demand a quorum.
It appears that Massie believes that members of Congress should be required to record a vote on one of the biggest spending bills in the history of the country.
But Trump described him as a “disaster for America” for holding up the vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Well said.
That die was cast in 2018 and the people gave the Democrats the power to get their cut
Why did the people give the Democrats that power? Was it because the Republicans who controlled the house for the first two years of the Trump administration failed to act as conservatives? Was it because the Senate failed to repeal Obama care? Was it because Trump was indifferent to deficit spending? Was it because the administration itself, especially in the person of Atty. Gen. Sessions, abdicated it’s role thus permitting the Muller investigation to so smear the president that the election of 2018 was lost? If we are reluctant to lay all the blame on poor Atty. Gen. sessions, perhaps we should ask where was the Republican Senate, where was the Republican house, where were the hearings? Perhaps it was because Republicans slept walked toward defeat in 2018.
If any of these facts are compelling, perhaps we should see Representative Massie as a voice crying in the wilderness for the Republicans to repent.
...
Good post...Pubbies were running for the exist likely because they caught wind of the dems’ plans to oust PDJT...they expected it to work. They likely also approached Sessions to go easy or else their master Clinton Foundation would come after them...not too far-fetched...
Massie took all the heat off Pelosi for her delay..
Because Trump chose to go after Massie, instead of the real culprit, Pelosi.
...
Massie literally should have contacted PDJT first and described his concerns and asked his advice...much younger to much older and teamwork could have ensued...now Pubbies look weak and divided...of course, small chance it was an act?
I think Massie was right and wrong at the same time. He was right on principle in his lonely stand against the inevitable. But he proved himself to be tone deaf against the times he finds himself in.
What did Massie hope to gain? One man tilting at a windmill. It was a grandstand play at best.
Generally I like Massie. He was not wrong about the roll call vote but given the circumstances this time I believe it was uneccesary.
Passivity in the face of anti-constitutional socialism is no virtue.
By allowing unanimous consent, they effectively ALL supported the bill. Federal Income Tax rates will now climb. The possibility of smaller government died.
I fear our once-great republic just died from pre-existing conditions worsened by COVID-19.
"Lawmakers ask for unanimous consent so that they can speed up what they believe to be uncontroversial business that would otherwise be delayed by holding a vote or going through the rules. Among the common unanimous consent (UC) requests made by legislators in hearings or on the floor of their chamber:
“I ask unanimous consent to enter [something] into the record.” “I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks.” “I ask unanimous consent that [a specific staffer] be granted floor privileges.” “I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call.” “I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered passed without objection.”"
https://www.countable.us/articles/38097-unanimous-consent-congress
I give Trump full credit for being smarter than the average bear. This tweet tells doesn't tell us that Massie was in any way wrong with what he did. Only that that Massie doesn't belong in a party that clearly doesn't think the way the Congressman does. Trump gets (and we should, too) that, for all their talk about the Constitution, the Republican Party is not (or no longer) a party whose pribciples and actuons are guided and bound by the Constitution.
The Democrats have not been for decades and are clearly unfettered by it. Republicans of the sort that make it past a few years on Capitol Hill make the mistake that it does matter (because that's how they were elected) but it hobbles their effectiveness because they also know that's no longer how Congress works.
We elected Trump to fight--and he is fighting. But we also elected Trump knowing he is no Conservative (or Constitutionalist, we know now) and we're pretty fortunate that Trump's actions to date have been closely aligned to our desires.
Trump's tweet signals, whether he really meant it or not, that our notions of winning back the country along the lines of the Founding Father's constitutional republic are naive at best and an obstruction to his work at worst. Because elected Republicans (as a body) at the national level don't believe it, either, because that's not how they operate. And again: despite their talk to the base back home.
Here is where Trump erred, unforced, in this: his name is on the law he passed. Trump gave a pass to everyone involved in the voice-vote to deny they voted for it (and they will if it serves them to say so down the road) while good or bad, and the Dems will only see the bad, Trump is tied to it. He didn't have to. Politically, Massie was doing Trump a huge favor by getting the weasels to put their names to this monstrosity they passed! He should've thanked him instead of castigating him.
Uncalled for... I’m still with President Trump, but Massie is correct.
100% agreement bump!
So true. Republicans are culpable in this mess, too.
Your post made me laugh. Thanks.
“ Is there any principled conservative position that you will stand for against Donald Trump? Is there any conservative hill you will die on with or without Donald Trump?”
This is a ludicrous consideration. When you are surrounded by a raging fire, you are not liberal, conservative, communist or capitalist. You are a survivalist...or you are dead. The economy is slammed shut. The people - the workers, the businesses that drive our entire way of life are within a couple of weeks of losing everything right up to being able to feed themselves. All you pensioners...do you think if this dragged on you’d keep getting your checks? The public sector employees are all getting paid, whether they are working or not...for awhile...a month or two.
Principle conservatism has all the value of a glass of water to a man whose house is burning down around him. It has never been anything but a way of thought written on paper anyway. In reality, no society, no nation anywhere has operated on those principles (with the possible exception of some podunk backwater somewhere in the world that can be dredged up) in well more than 100 years. All the conservative principles you can come up with aren’t worth a roll of toilet paper today. This is - or more likely has been made into - an existential crisis, from the standpoint of the nation right down to the personal level.
“Is it not fair to ask whether Trump vigorously fought the Democrats hard enough against fiscal insanity?”
I am not a pensioner, I am not a business owner or the employee of a shut down business or industry. I have no skin in the game - yet. But I too will be swallowed under like everyone else if the economy is not resuscitated in pretty short order. I’ve said this a hundred times, if the American voter didn’t want to give the Democrats power they wouldn’t have elected so many of them. In an existential crisis, where every day matters, you play the hand you are given, not the your “political principles” say you should have. The engine - the heart - that pumps the blood to everyone living in this country has gone into cardiac arrest. “Principle conservatives” are what - 15%, or I can be Uber generous and say 20% of the people - a faction. If you want to promote your conservative principles in the middle of a raging fire, you (and I’m speaking of Massie here, not you Mr. Forrest) you are beyond foolish, you are completely out of touch with the mass of humanity around you.
Massie did nothing wrong. If you want to learn about how a President overthrew the Constitution to keep the Union whole in a genuine, yes-hundreds-of-thousands-were-killed existential crisis, go read up on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
Even Trump and Lyin’ Ted made up. Massie will survive this. They may even laugh together about it one day.
LOL! Pretty much!
It goes on like this all the time in DC. I’m sure the truth would either have us storming the place or crying in the closet.
Unless i am not understanding what is going on..which happens once in awhile..i don’t think this was an offense worthy of removal from the GOP..
The same GOP that let Trump dangle in the wind the first 2? years he took office?
Also, i can’t get past i thought it was disaster relief bill? not a mammoth Stimulus Bill?
Not to long ago many on the right started a little movement called the TEA party Maybe you heard of it.
The TEA in TEA party stood for Taxed Enough Already.
NOt really sure what has changed but now we are not only spending more but the biggest Stimulus in US History!?
And we are being told it’s a good thing?
Hear! Hear!
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