Going without portfolio appears to be the only honorable approach - how do you justify sucking up to one corrupt party over the other?
They have built a system to “force” honest men to bend their knee to corrupt overlords. Have you ever wondered why good men become corrupted in DC? There’s your answer.
Should we continue to feed this beast?
It’s up to the individual members to resist getting sucked into the vortex. Too many weak-willed, ambitious or power-hungry people end up there, and it is up to us to be vigilant against nominating them. We absolutely must get control of that process, which is highly flawed at the present time.
If losing out on committee posts (or being stripped of them) is the end result of resistance, that I can sympathize with (more so than going in as an “Independent” and refusing to serve on a committee, which is a big difference, because you’re willfully rendering yourself impotent).
There should be non-stop pressure on GOP leadership to stop feeding the proverbial beast (because at this point, it’s the only party open to that — trying to play off both parties as an “Independent” won’t. The Democrats have already gone full-blown Communist-Fascist, they won’t brook ANY anti-ultraleft dissent, and that was especially clear after Watergate to the remaining centrist members).
Basically, we need more Cruz types who are not only not willing to go along to get along, but are there to force the REAL change to get us back to our Constitutional moorings.