Beware, this article is political bait and switch.
I hold no brief for McCarthy but when an author undertakes to tell us that, "McCarthy exemplifies the big divide between the “America First” MAGA base and Establishment Republicans. This is why an expected Red Wave has the potential to turn into a Red Puddle", he has a duty to his reader to prove it.
Instead the author launches into a diatribe against the Republican National Committee and against transgenders. Again, I hold no brief for the Republican National Committee nor for the transgender movement but what has this got to do with McCarthy? And more importantly what the hell does this have to do with the upcoming 2022 election?
McCarthy might be accused of succumbing to the temptation of all sports teams or athletes who hold a commanding lead which is to play defense and lose momentum and ultimately the game. So it is understandable that McCarthy would preach a more centrist approach to capture (or hold) independents knowing that conservatives have no place else to go in the wake of the Biden/Pelosi carnage. So he plays "safe."
The author does not undertake to prove his case. And if he did to do so by aiming at McCarthy instead of McConnell, I would suggest his aim is wide of the mark. It is McConnell who is in the process of extending the debt, waving the filibuster, saving Biden and the Democrats and exposing the Republican party to an actual schism. Many would say that McConnell, by accommodating and appeasing the Democrats, is pulling their teeth and denying them an issue, government shutdown, with which to save their electoral chances. That at least is an argument although one I do not find to be persuasive.
The next election will turn on the economy primarily and perhaps on crime and, thirdly, Ukraine and Afghanistan-it most assuredly will not turn on the fate of the transgender movement.
I don't like it when the author keeps a hole card up his sleeve and seeks to mislead the reader with a false proposition about his true purpose. If he wants to marshal Republicans to fight transgenderism let him directly persuade us.
Strange times.
I look at your post, which I am tempted to disagree with, and the article which I am really tempted to rant about, and then I look at your screen name and think that you must be a decent fellow and that I should hesitate to attack what you defend.
And I recall that Sam McGee, too, was from Tennessee, and as an American expat long in Canada I am no longer in a great position to judge the ins and outs of American politics (I decided after becoming landed in Canada in 2015 to cease voting in the U.S. to stop voting as one can’t ride two horses at once—though this stuck me more strongly as me having no business voting as a citizen of Muskingham County Ohio (where my parents had relocated and I have loose ties that were strong enough to justify registration) rather than Coos County Oregon (where I have strong ties, but no longer of the sort to easily justify registration as I took off after high school and my presence had become rare). State Citizenship ought to be taken more strongly. Seven year residence before voter registration seems to me a good thought.
Strange things go on in the U.S. on which I should be cautious about commenting on, but strange things go on in all coroners of the world. One can learn a lot reading Free Republic if one pays attention to the right posters.
Alternately, one can vent in an entertaining manner that still has some entertainment value. Or one can bore people.
I will say that while I think I could still do a decent job as an Oregon citizen, no individual citizen, and no human wisdom, is going to save the Republic.
I will pray for the Republic, but aiding in sorting out the mess north of the border is something I now know more about, though it too is beyond human wisdom. God Save the Queen.
And I am not the first American to cast his lot this way.
(Oddly enough, in searching for this poem, which your screen name brought to mind, I found out that Johnny Cash turned it into a “song” [or at least a track]).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJNZwuamwj0
The Cremation of Sam McGee
BY ROBERT W. SERVICE
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘tain’t being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; ... then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.