Posted on 12/16/2014 7:21:49 AM PST by xzins
After a week of passionate debate and late night votes, the Senate passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill this Saturday that will keep the entire federal government, except the Department of Homeland Security, funded through September 2015.
Here are three lessons conservatives should take away from the ordeal:
1.Corporatism is King - Money talks and activists walk. That is the sad lesson from a $1.1 trillion spending bill that included huge payoffs to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Citibank, and corporations that use taxpayer subsidized loans to invest overseas. Meanwhile, House leaders did nothing to stop President Obama's executive amnesty other than offer up a show vote on a separate piece of legislation that had no chance of even being voted on in the Senate.
2.Republican Leaders Want To Cave On Amnesty - Not only did Republican leaders not even allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obama's amnesty, even though they included plenty of other restrictions on federal spending in the omnibus, but they even included more than a billion in spending on programs to clean up Obama's last amnesty, including $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service's unaccompanied children program and $260 million for the State to Department to spend on Central American countries.
3.Republican Leaders Lie - Not only did Republican leaders lie about Congress's ability to defund the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, the agency in charge of implementing Obama's amnesty, but they also lied to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) in order to get his vote on an early procedural matter, and they falsely claimed that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) empowered Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to sneak more Obama nominees past the Senate.
None of these lessons are good news for conservatives. If anything they show that with Reid out of the way in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) are going to be very eager to cut big deals with Obama so they can prove to Washington elites that they can "govern." These deals will all benefit large corporations almost always at the expense of small businesses and middle class Americans.
Conservatives are always struggling with what to do about these things. We talk about new parties, staying home, etc. I’m an advocate of taking over this party...or at least trying to. We did once before with Ronald Reagan.
So, the single MOST important thing we can do, in my opinion, is to SETTLE on One Conservative Standard Bearer BEFORE the primary season begins next year.
I would vote for Cruz.
Maybe YOU learned these things. We already knew them.
“Driven home one more time” would probably be more relevant than “learned”. Either way, I’d point out that freepers are news-hounds enough to already know these things. I’m surprised at times how little some conservative voters know about what’s going on
4. It is time for a change in the system. Nothing will improve as long as we keep thinking the R politicians will bail us out. Article V or something else.
“:I’m surprised at times how little some conservative voters know about what’s going on”
Yep. Unfortunately, most people take their news from the left or the right and never figure out what the truth really is, but they can tell you sports scores and pop culture TV happenings.
I don’t know how many people know the Coast Guard falls under Homeland Security - not funding it after Feb. 27, 2015 will increase illegal immigration. How is that a bad thing for the President?
There aren’t enough people that feel like us to make a difference. After nearly 50 years of liberal control of education and the media the coup is almost complete. The Cloward/Priven strategy is now the conservative’s best hope, we’ll never restore America at the ballot box.
Perhaps, he will make a good USSC justice someday.
...but they can tell you sports scores and pop culture TV happenings.
And that's the problem. "Truth" is so depressing that people of all stripes avoid it -- especially when they feel they can't do anything about it all. Instead, they focus on dreams, fun and happiness, which brings joy to their hearts.
Sports can be fun even when your team loses, because you can carp about the players that made the mistakes. (Ever think why so many New Yorkers were Mets fans back in 1962-8? Or why the term "Monday morning quarterback" came to be?)
Is it mature? No. But after so much doom and gloom, you want to just shut the negative out. Remember that this is just as true in politics as in other parts of life. Look at the love people have of scandals. They don't talk about the false employment numbers around the water cooler, they talk about who got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.
The otherwise totally divergent interests of the Tea Party and the OWS crowd are quickly converging over all of this Crony Capitalist crap. The establishment had better prepare itself to be rocked.
I would vote for Ted Cruz too but I an concerned that we will never get the chance to do so. You summarize the dilemma well - one one hand we can subsidize the GOP and hope to turn it into a party that supports conservative principles and would support the nomination of a man like Cruz....or we look to form a 3rd party which at best will probably not be able to generate public support and money needed to win elections for at least 10 years.
So if our best chance is to unify behind a Conservative candidate like Cruz and try to gain control over the fund-raising and public relations machinery of the GOP, just how is that actually going to happen? For the most part, the GOP has consolidated its forces over the past 4-7 years, eliminating the Tea Party as a credible devil’s advocate and refusing to move so much as an inch to the right (as this latest cromnibus fiasco proves). I think it is possible for this to change, but I don’t see anything happening that would indicate it will. Instead, we see Cruz throwing raw meat to conservatives which also polarizes the opposition against him, including many in the GOP. It feels great, but how does it help win elections and reverse the course of the nation?
Great post but the FIRST thing that MUST happen is for Conservatives (including Freepers) to quit bad mouthing other Conservatives. If we don’t Unite, we might as well put the keyboard up, go find a hobby, and quit kidding ourselves! Boehner and McConnell are just laughing at us behind closed doors.
Spot on. Just think back on the 2012 primary debates where they darn near needed a bigger stage just to fit ‘em all on. The easiest way for RATs to win is by “divide and conquer”.
And the worse enemy of Conservatism? Conservatives! Just wait for the circular firing squad to form up once frontrunners start to emerge, we’ll see it first right here on FR. First will be the “I’m staying home because XX said something about abortion/guns/immigration/younameit one time that I didn’t like”. Then there will be the “I’m right and you’re not” crowd, who just don’t get the fact that in the end, whoever our candidate is has to be able to get more votes than the Democrat candidate. And then there will be the “I Am Not A Lawyer BUT...” gang, and the “Cruz is not a natural born citizen” will be part of their stock in trade.
Maybe if Rush, Hannity, Levin, and all the other conservative mouthpieces who have the ability to educate and inform get behind a common message and start driving some of these points home with conservatives, it won’t be too late.
Exactly and if I had my way Cruz would be on stage debating with himself or an empty chair during the primaries and ALL Freepers would quit carping at him. Someone recently said “well, he’s JUST a Senator and has very little experience”. Well, George Washington didn’t either. It’s like some are looking for THE PERFECT MAN!
Cruz is my party. He either leads the GOP or I am not GOP. Not that they will miss me, since they’ve already decided they can win without me.
The GOP is running out of principles they can betray. I don’t think there are many left.
I’m now at the point of voting for an actual conservative, no matter what.
RINOs and the GOPe are actually more of a threat to the constitution than Democrats, because they protect the status quo, extend government and deflate actual conservatism.
So, I will happily fund, support, work for and vote for Cruz, no matter whether in the primaries or general election, or even whether he is on the ballot.
I might as well scr*w the GOPe as hard as they scr*w conservatism.
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