To know how to reach a destination, you must first know where you are. Without oversight — effective, vigorous oversight — you’ll never solve anything. You cannot write a bill to fix an agency unless you have an understanding of the problem. And you can only know this by conducting oversight, asking the tough questions, holding the bureaucrats accountable, find out what works and what doesn’t and know what has already been done. Effective oversight is an effective tool to expose government overreach and wasteful spending, but it also markedly exposes where we lose our liberty and our essential freedoms. True debates about national priorities would come about if we did effective oversight. It is the senate, once hailed as the world’s greatest deliberative body, where these differences should be argued. Our differences should be resolved through civil discourse so they’re not settled in the street. Just as the constitution provides for majority rule in our democracy while protecting the rights of the individual, the senate must return to the principles to gain the trust of the electorate. And it can. – Retiring US Senator Dr. Tom Coburn

Breitbart News asked Former Alaska GovernorSarah Palin what she thought ofSpeaker of the House John Boehner’s recent actoions in facilitating the passage of the Government-Funding “Cromnibus” Bill

1. What do you think of Speaker Boehner having President Obama ‘whip votes’ from the White House in order to pass this bill?
It stinks to high heaven. Did arrogant politicians not get the memo that Obama’s agenda was decisively defeated in last month’s historic midterm landslide? Good Lord, America said loud and clear not just “no” but “hell no” to Obama’s failed policies. Americans who pay attention said absolutely no to Obama’s amnesty for illegal aliens. 

We also said no to the mother-of-all unfunded mandates, Obamacare, and voters believed promises that they would ratchet down the $18 trillion debt. Well, our bad for apathetically trusting politicians. No, on second thought, it’s not “our bad.” Some of us warned and worked hard to elect candidates who would buck the status quo. Many conscientious Americans did all they could to open the eyes of low-information voters. It was tough going up against Obama’s lapdogs in the media and the power liberals have to play their politics of personal destruction against commonsense conservatives. 

But really how out-of-touch do these politicians have to be to misunderstand our recent mandate to stop Barack Obama’s fundamental transformation of the greatest nation on earth? 

2. Only 162 Republicans voted for this bill–a bill that will take decision making away from a Republican controlled Congress in 4 weeks–does that strike you as outrageous?

It’s baffling really. The Republican Leadership in the House just flipped American voters the bird by sidelining the new Congress we just elected. I want the names of all 162 yahoos who would squander the opportunity to respect the will of the people and get America on the right track. Please print their names so we can ask them, “What the heck are you thinking?!”

And thank you to the 67 House Republicans who did vote no. Let’s remind everyone of their names also.

3. Do you believe that the 162 Republicans that voted for the bill will face a backlash by conservatives?

Hope so! I’ll do my part and I call upon every citizen to do their civic duty to save our country. It’s easy; understand RINO season opens soon and don’t hold back. 

4. Do you believe that Speaker Boehner working with President Obama effectively tried to ‘nullify’ the sweeping Republican victory in the 2014 mid-terms?

That’s the result thus far, so yes. This is an example of the GOP establishment campaigning one way and then governing another. It’s quite nauseating. They promised they would do everything in their power to stop Obama’s executive amnesty – I heard their darn campaign speeches promising to do so! – and yet when they have the power to do so (power that we the voters just gave them) they tacitly endorse Obama’s failed agenda. They’re shining that boot that liberals have on the neck of our economy. They’re carrying Barack Obama’s water even more so than Nancy Pelosi if you can believe it. 

5. Do you think John Boehner should be re-elected Speaker of the House given his actions over the pass few days? 

Constitutional conservatives who understand government’s balance of power and the grave danger in Obama’s lawlessness, and those of us who want smart and principled leadership, should be perplexed and disappointed if stale leadership is re-elected, considering that the midterm election was all about “the status quo has got to go.” It’s time for new energy and steel-spined commitment to stop Obama’s bizarre behavior against this country! Surely there are more of us than not who know that our Founders’ memory, our vets, and our children deserve better that what we’re underneath today. Keep the faith that there are more of us than there are of them who think broken campaign promises and a broken government are just dandy. 

Boehner has to be the biggest blooming idiot of a Congressman that I have ever seen.

Boehner and his fellow Vichy Republicans believe that the American people want them to acquiesce to Obama and the Democrats, giving them everything they want, in the spirit of “compromise”.

That is NOT what Dr. Coburn was so eloquently speaking of, in his retirement speech on the Floor of the Senate.

The Vichy Republicans believe that, by presenting themselves as “Democrat-Life”, and possibly running Jeb Bush as their Presidential Candidate, they will be remembered fondly at the voting booth in November of 2016.

Oh, we will remember them all right. But not in the way they want us to. We will not remember them as leaders. Oh, no. Rather, Americans Conservatives will remember them with all of the fondness that the French Resistance remembered the Nazi collaborators, or Vichy French, after World War II.

What slays me is the fact that the Establishment Republicans seem to be quite content, in their moderately left-leaning stupor, to be totally oblivious and tone deaf of their Conservative Base, average hard working middle-class Americans like you and me, even after we left no doubt as to the way we feel about the direction which the country is taking, through the political tsunami, which was the 2014 Mid-Term Election.

They keep on making bad choices.

Moderate Republicans have been a barrier to Republican victory for as long as I can remember. Like Quakers, Establishment Republicans seem to believe that passive resistance and reaching out to their sworn enemies friends, is the way to defeat those who oppose you.

It has been especially bad during the Obama Administration, as the House and Senate Republican Leadership apparently cherish their friendship with the Democrats more than they do the wishes of the folks back home. Yes, they talk a good game, but so did Jon Lovitz in those “Liar Sketches” during the old days of Saturday Night Live, back when they were actually funny.

Yeah,  my wife Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket!

In 1975, Ronald Wilson Reagan gave a speech which sums up our present situation and how we need to handle the Republican Party leadership, quite well.

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don ‘t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party” — when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.

And let it provide indexing — adjusting the brackets to the cost of living — so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.

Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people. Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.

Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.

And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.”

We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

I believe that the “Moderate”, i.e. “Establishment” Wing of the Republican Party is stuck in a cycle in which their desire to protect their own hindquarters and cushy “jobs” have lead to a self-imposed isolation from the very American Citizens who were responsible for their having those cushy “jobs” in the first place.

I believe that average Americans, like you and me, exercised our power, a little over a month ago, to relieve them of the burden of such a stressful job, and send others to Washington, who will listen to their “bosses”.

Just as Ronaldus Magnus said those 39 years ago, it is time to “let them go their way”.

Until He Comes, 

KJ