An Open Letter to the D.C. Right

He's a little slow, but better late than never.

By Bruce Bawer • May 23, 2020

I’m addressing this to several of you whom I know in Washington, D.C. Not all of you, but some of you.

I’ve known you for decades. You’re think-tankers, government officials, political journalists, and pundits. Some of you have been all these things.

For a long while, I thought you were the good guys. You talked about individual liberty. Some of you identified as conservatives, others as libertarians, still others as classical liberals. None of you are outright leftists.

And, once upon a time, you were my friends.

You cheered my books on gay rights. (Many of you are gay.) But when I started writing critically about Islam, you went mum. All of you. You didn’t attack me in public, but you didn’t express support, either.

Learn To Play By The Rules Of Politics So Democrats Can Destroy The Country

Satire by Andrew Klavan:

If there’s one thing that’s important for every American to know, it’s how to play by the rules of politics. Playing by the rules allows you to maintain an atmosphere of civility and dignity while the Democrats run roughshod over every norm of behavior and destroy everything good and true about America.

So let’s learn some of the rules.

When someone completely unassociated with Donald Trump produces a video in which Trump shoots his enemies in the Democrat Party and the media, it proves that Trump is degrading public discourse and inspiring violence.

When a sportswear company puts an enormous billboard in Times Square showing a woman tying Trump up and stomping on the president’s face, then it’s time to buy some new sportswear.

When Arizona’s lady Governor Jan Brewer pointed a finger at President Barack Obama and told him she needed some border security, that was called “Fingergate” and was an example of Brewer’s racist disrespect for our first black president – who, did I mention, was black?

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stuck out her finger at Donald Trump, that was an example of feminist independence and courage and time to buy some new sportswear and stomp on the president’s face.

When Barack Obama’s Justice Department and Intelligence Agencies spied on the opposing party’s campaign, that was our heroic deep state protecting Americans from their incorrect decisions.

When Donald Trump suggested Ukraine examine corruption that might include opposition candidate Joe Biden, that was worse than Watergate in which a president spied on the opposing party like Barack Obama did to Trump.

Finally, when the news media lie and distort in order to support a deep state coup, that’s freedom of speech. When Americans speak out freely against the media’s corruption, that endangers the First Amendment.

You must follow these rules carefully or else you could wake up and find yourself telling a power-obsessed bunch of baby-killing Communist Democrats and media to kiss your butt and then go straight to hell.

And we wouldn’t want that.

Ryan Blocking Concealed Carry Reciprocity

“Why haven’t we seen movement over either 38 or 2909 since the horrific events in Virginia?” Walters asked, noting the Republicans control the House and the Senate and both Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appear to be blocking bills advancing the right to keep and bear arms.

“You know what?” Massie replied, “The Speaker told me he didn’t think the timing was right. And I think this is the exact timing to bring this bill.”

Of course it is. What a disingenuous excuse. When will the timing be better?

Tell me again, what is Ryan good for?

Bib government Ryan: "Don't call Puerto Rico bill a 'bailout'"

When is a bailout not a bailout?  Let Paul Ryan, who's trying to pass a bailout bill for Puerto Rico explain:

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) blasted Wall Street investors on Wednesday as he tried to tamp down conservative discontent with a bill to assist Puerto Rico.

The GOP leader charged that “special money interest groups on Wall Street” are trying to sabotage the legislation by billing it as a “bailout.” ...

But at a hearing Wednesday on the bill, several conservative lawmakers argued the GOP-crafted legislation is effectively a bailout for an island struggling with an ailing economy that is billions of dollars in debt.

Several Republicans expressed concern with allowing the island to renegotiate its debts, and insisted taxpayers would eventually have to foot the bill for Puerto Rican relief.

Meanwhile, Democrats have expressed openness to the bill, but have said they cannot back it without some changes, most notably to the powers of an outside fiscal control board.

So the only difference between the Republicans who want to bail out Puerto Rico and Democrats who want to bail out Puerto Rico is that the Democrats don't want any oversight on the bailout money.

TOM TANCREDO: I’M QUITTING GOP

This decision has been incubating over the past 17 years, years of watching the downward spiral of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan into the Party of Democrat Lite.

As a Member of Congress for ten years (1998-2008), I was subjected to threats and pressures from the Congressional Leadership and President George W. Bush to support the creation of an expensive Medicare prescription drug program–even though creating a new government spending program financed by massive debt flies in the face of the Republican Party’s core principles.

Our most powerful and influential “leaders” were shoving this down our throats in a crass political effort to use taxpayer money to buy the votes of senior citizens–particularly in the state of Florida in the next presidential election.

I was incredulous about the fact that the most intense lobbying I had ever seen undertaken by our “leadership” was not an effort to limit government or the dollars it spends; it was to do just the opposite.

That incident came just months after I was told by President Bush’s top political operative, Karl Rove, “never to darken the door of the White House again” because of my criticism of the administration’s dangerously lax immigration policies in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

When I first arrived in the U.S. House of Representatives, I naively believed that it was primarily the Democrats who were committed to open borders. But I quickly learned the entire Republican establishment also supported a policy of immigration non-enforcement.

I was repeatedly pulled into the office of the then-Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, and threatened with dire consequences if I continued to speak out publicly for common-sense immigration policies and true border security – particularly if I was doing so in the districts of other Republican Members of Congress.

For most of those years after 2000, we had a Republican President and a Republican-controlled Congress, but the conservative agenda was largely ridiculed and abandoned.

Across America, in every state, countless hardworking Americans have taken time away from their families and their jobs to volunteer on political campaigns– knocking on doors, making phone calls and talking to neighbors – all to support the effort to beat back the Obama agenda. In 2010, that grassroots effort resulted in the Republican takeover in the House. In 2014, it resulted in Republicans sweeping to power in the U.S. Senate – and the largest House majority since Herbert Hoover was President.

Yet, despite these historic gains, nothing changed. The GOP neither advanced a conservative agenda nor checked the radical “transformative” agenda of Barack Obama. We got condescending lip service, and nothing more.

Read the whole thing.

Jim Jordan Puts GOP Leadership on Notice

Jordan and other members of the Freedom Caucus believe that Republican leaders have tended to yield to Democratic demands rather than keeping the promises they made on the campaign trail in 2014. And they thought that sending Boehner a message was important enough to oppose a free-trade package they’d normally be inclined to support.

“Why do 65 percent of Republican voters think Republicans aren’t doing what we said we were going to do? You know why? Because we’re not doing what we said we were going to do,” says one Freedom Caucus member. “We didn’t talk about trade. . . . We talked about dealing with the executive amnesty issue, we talked about dealing with Obamacare, we talked about totally reforming the tax code, requiring work for welfare.”

Instead, Republicans are working on implementing Obama'a agenda.

Taxing Time

There is a special election in Michigan on the question of raising the sales tax. But this initiative was pushed by Republicans, which led to this observation: Businessmen are often morally bankrupt.

Rick Snyder became Governor after the crash. He and the Republicans were swept into office in November 2010 by the fury to which Obamacare gave rise, and he and they brought to the challenge all of the virtues and vices of the businessman. Those virtues are considerable. Businessmen can add and subtract. They are used to deal-making, and they are skilled in keeping enterprises going. The vices of the businessman are, however, considerable as well. When it comes to scruples, they tend to come up short. Pragmatism nearly always trumps principle.

If you find what I say annoying or even insulting, pause for a moment and ask yourself this. In 2009, when Barack Obama was pushing what his party named the Affordable Care Act, which side did the executives of the healthcare industry take? Did they warn us of the dangers involved? Did they take their stand with the patients they served? Or did they consult the bottom line – their bottom line – and sell us out? Put more bluntly, were they bought by Obama and the Democrats?

Do not tell me that they did not know what they were doing. This is a sphere in which they have far greater expertise than anyone else. They knew which way the wind was blowing, and they chose profit over principle. Individuals may sacrifice profit for principle. Soldiers often sacrifice their lives in such a manner. But businessmen in their guise as businessmen very rarely prefer the common good to the good of their enterprise; and, when businessmen go into politics, they tend to exhibit the habits they learned in private enterprise.

Think about it this way. When was the last time that you heard a Republican speak about justice? The Democrats do so all the time. They speak with great frequency about “social justice,” and Republicans rarely challenge them on the basic principles. Consider what is called “affirmative action.” The phrase is a euphemism for politically enforced racial and sexual discrimination. It is a sign in the window that says, “White men need not apply.” You know that, and I know that. When was the last time that you heard a Republican candidate say as much? When was the last time you heard a Republican denounce “affirmative action” as unjust. When it comes to principled argument, the Republicans – who are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Chamber of Commerce – generally fall silent. In the face of evil, they temporize.

When you hear someone running for office as a former businessman and his appeal is to his ability to use his business skills in government, realize that it means he will cave to opposition.

UPDATE:

Michigan Proposal 1 fails as voters reject tax increase to fund road repairs.

Obamacare Shutdown Showdown: 2013 Is Not 1995, and Cruz Can Win

Keep praying.

David Brooks Goes Birther over Ted Cruz

And Maxie Shields defines leadership as "getting people to do things they really don't want to do."  Is that how normal people define leadership? 

Of course it's NPR

Why Latinos All Vote GOP

It’s gratitude for the amnesty bill signed by Reagan in the 1980s.

This logic brought to you by your local establishment GOP stooge.

Via Patterico 

Message to Peggy Noonan: "F**k Off" you ugly old white skank.

Peggy Noonan was one of the Rhino-Republicans who helped Barack Obama win the presidency. I was reminded of this by Kyle-Anne Shiver:

When Sarah Palin lifted her pit-bull-in-lipstick foot to the Republican stage in 2008, it took all of five minutes for her to get the rhetorical bulls eye on her forehead. The same Peggy Noonan declared on an open mike that with Palin’s nomination, the election was “all over.”

Here’s Noonan in 2008 on Morning Joe (start at 5:10):

When Obama broke his pledge to take public funds for his campaign (opening his coffers to undocumented credit card contributions from people like Mr. Goodwill Hunting) Noonan insisted that this was not a man who broke his word, but someone who “came to play.”

According to Noonan, Obama wasn’t a Chicago machine politician who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years hearing him spout racist, anti-Semitic, God Damn America sermons; he was “Obambi,” a harmless cuddly little fawn.

Noonan gushes about the ad Obama was running about embracing his “middle American” values, never questioning where he would have gotten these values; Hawaii, Columbia, Harvard, the faculty lounge, Chicago, talking with Bill Ayers, listening to Reverend Wright, buying real estate from Tony Rezko?

Noonan on Obama: “he’s not new on the scene, he’s like us and he’s fabulous.”

Noonan on John McCain during the 2008 campaign: no war hero, just “ … an old white man.”



And Peggy Noonan on Obama’s spiritual advisor, the aforementioned Jeremiah Wright?

He seems like a bright man, warm, humorous and compelling, but also needful and demanding of the spotlight,… What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race. Mr. Obama's stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be "one of us," that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race. … But I am finding it hard to feel truly upset about what Mr. Wright has said.

Noonan says she disagrees with what Wright says.  How can she not and still show her face? But, there’s always the BUT: ignore the fact that his sermons are racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic and full of hate for America; he’s bright, warm, humorous and compelling. Compelling? What is compelling about what Wright is saying; the hatred of white people, or Jews, or America?

And she follows up with a plea for America to be fooled. She wants Obama to be able to convince us that he can make good change, he’s "one of us."

So today, having helped sell America on Obama, telling us that – except for the bitter clingers – he’s one of us, she find his stock sinking in value and all of a sudden, she’s “one of us” again.

Debbie Schlussel Has her pegged (March 2008): Peggy Noonan: Delusional Obama Gusher, Rev. Wright Apologist & Phony Conservative

I have a message for Peggy Noonan and all the rest of her friends, fuck off and die. We don’t need you, we don’t trust you and we’re not looking for your advice. We see where that led and you’re not welcome.

Ellmers to NRCC: Thanks for Nothing

The Other McCain tells us what he really thinks about the Republican Establishment:

Notice that the bumbling dingbats at GOP-HQ are now telling the New York Times that everything happened because of them and their genius strategy. Excuse me while I quote myself:

Pete Sessions should have been stripped of his chairmanship the day after Dede Scozzafava endorsed Bill Owens. If there were still any old-fashioned justice in the world, Pete Sessions would have been horsewhipped and stomped to death by the House Republican Caucus, his head carried through the streets atop a pike, and his mutilated headless corpse fed to dogs.

Forget about the Republican establishment in Washington. Civil war has broken out between the RINOS and Real America as to who is going to represent Republican values, set the direction of the Republicans in congress, and who will be the next Republican presidential candidate. All the RINO guns are trained on Sarah Palin with daily hit pieces on her by the RINOs and their - temporary - allies in the MFM.

In the meantime, please contribute to Renee Ellmers to fund her recount effort against the truly vile Bob Etheridge in North Carolina.