Tag: Mitch McConnell

McConnell Disses TEA Party. Palin Blasts Establishment Republicans

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Republicans Vs. Tea PartyThe Establishment Republicans seem to have forgotten who presented them with the majority in the House of Representatives in the Mid-Term Elections of 2010.

On Saturday, the New York Times published a report featuring an interview they had with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,

As conservative activist groups stirred up trouble for establishment Republican Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, party leaders in Washington first tried to ignore the insurgents, then tried to reason with them, and ultimately left it to primary voters to settle the matter.

But after several of those conservatives — in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware in 2010 and in Indiana and Missouri in 2012 — managed to win their primaries but lose in the general election, party leaders felt stung by what they saw as avoidable defeats.

This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.

“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

There McConnell goes, thinking again. Ol’ Mitch sure is an ungrateful old codger, isn’t he?

The TEA party isn’t going anywhere, as exhibited by speeches from Conservatives like Ted Cruz an Sarah Palin at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s Annual Conference this past weekend.

Speaking of the Arctic Fox, she brought the house down, delivering the Keynote speech at CPAC on Saturday afternoon. Nationalreview.com has the story…

Palin delivered the closing remarks at this year’s conference and, in a speech that touched on topics ranging from Obamacare to the Republican establishment to Ted Cruz to the war on women, she brought the audience of approximately 11,000 to its feet repeatedly with the sassiness and attitude that has become her calling card.

“The age of Obama is almost over,” she announced. “This is the end of an error, he is the lamest of lame ducks.”

Palin also launched an assault on the party establishment, which she said is urging Republicans to law low while Obamacare and the president’s feckless foreign policy create problems for Democrats.

“You do interrupt when they are in the process of destroying your country, and that’s what we’re gonna do in 2014,” she said. Audience members interrupted to exclaim, “Run, Sarah, run!” (She garnered just 2 percent in the conference’s annual presidential straw poll.)

Palin’s message to President Obama, who is in the midst of a stand off with Russian president Vladimir Putin over his incursion into Ukraine: ”Mr. President,” she said, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.” Then she acknowledged she should be more understanding in the face of the president’s troubles. “After all, who could have seen this one coming?” she quipped, referring to her 2008 prediction that American inaction in the face of Putin’s invasion of Georgia would encourage him to invade Ukraine.

“I love coming back here because there are always so many young people or, as you’re known by the folks across the river, Obamacare suckers,” she said. “Turns out, you have the change that they were waiting for: You have the $5s, the $10s, and the $20s.”

“They said the train of history was roaring to the left,” she said, “but then, something happened. That ‘Hope and Change’ went from a catchy campaign slogan to a reality and along the way, ‘Hope and Change,’ ‘Yes we can,’ it became ‘No You Can’t’: No you can’t log on to the website. No, you can’t keep your health care. No, you can’t make a phone call without Michelle Obama knowing this is the third time you dialed Pizza Hut delivery.”

Pushing back against the Democrats’ claim that the Republican party’s pro-life stance constitutes a war on women, she told the women in today’s audience, of the Democratic party, “Don’t let them use you unless you choose to be their political pawn or just their accessory on their arm. Honey, that’s not liberation, that’s subjugation, and this sisterhood fights against that.”

…Palin, who heads a political action committee dedicated to backing candidates that she supports, and who will host the show “Amazing America” on the Sportsman Channel starting next month, has not backed a 2016 presidential candidate yet, but did give a special shout out to freshman senator Ted Cruz. “Liberty needs a Congress on Cruz control,” she said, praising Cruz’s all-night filibuster and his attempt to defund Obamacare, which she said had helped to wake people up to the horrors of Obamacare.

Palin offered her own version of “Green Eggs and Ham” after offering praise for Cruz, who read the book on the Senate floor during his filibuster against Obamacare last fall.

“I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like this health care scam. I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books,” she said. The audience laughed and cheered.

“I do not like this spyin’ man, I do not like ‘Oh, yes we can,” she continued. “I do not like this kind of hope, and we won’t take it nope, nope, nope.”

 McConnell is a prime example of what is wrong with Washington, DC.

The Establishment Republicans are so out-of-touch with their constituencies, that they actually believe their own press releases, while living in their secluded “Beltway Bubble”..

At a time when the current president is going down in flames, instead of roasting marshmallows over the bonfire, Vichy Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, continue to “reachiacross the aisle” to help save the Prevaricator-in-Chief.

These RINOs are so consumed by their avarice and quest to be just like their Democratic allies, that they have forgotten why they were elected in the first place. If their constituents had wanted to elect Democrats, they would have pulled the lever marked “DEMOCRAT”.

It’s time for McConnell, Maverick, Grahamnesty, Cryin’ John, and the rest of the GOP Elite girly-men to put their big boy pants on, and do the job they were elected to do: work for the betterment of this country, not for its destruction at the hands of Barack Hussein Obama. He’s doing fine with that…all by his lonesome.

If the Vichy Republicans had actually followed in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, and upheld the promises they made during the TEA Party Sweep of 2010, then our country would be in a lot better shape…and, so would their careers as professional politicians.

And, as I’ve said before, if the Vichy Republicans think that the new “Americans”, that they will create by voting for Amnesty, will actually vote for them, replacing us worrisome members of the Conservative Base, I have two bridges over the Mississippi River at Memphis to sell them. 

And, in the spirit of the nickname I’ve given them, and the courage they are showing, I will throw in two French Rifles from World War II….dropped once…never fired.

Until He Comes,

KJ

From Reagan to Rubio: The Wussification of the Republican Party

On By kingsjesterIn Politics19 Comments

Cartoon-Cruz-Vs-Establishment-600I started this Blog back in April of 2010 as a way of venting my frustration with what I saw happening in the greatest country on God’s Green Earth.

I could not believe what was going on around me. The American People had elected an incompetent, pompous, didactic, divisive, self-involved, Marxist idiot to the most important position in the world: the Presidency of the United States.

The Federal Government, under the leadership of Barack Hussein Obama, and his partners in crime, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, was headed down the road to full-blown socialism, faster than Rosie O’Donnell heading to Golden Corral.

Gradually, from seemingly out of nowhere, a movement began. It wasn’t a Liberal “Astroturf” movement…it was a groundswell, started by average Americans, who were fed up with being over-taxed and under-represented by the people whom they had elected and sent to Washington to SERVE THEM.

As the movement began to take place, it was clear that this was a CONSERVATIVE movement…and a PATRIOTIC one…as they took the name “TEA Party” which stood for “Taxed Enough Already”. Just as the Colonials, who revolted against the King of England, these Americans were, and still are, fighting against “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”.

I remain proud of these Americans. As a fellow Conservative and TEA Party Supporter, they remind me of the Republican Party of my young adulthood, when, in November of 1980, at the age of 21 and 11 months, I cast my very first vote for the greatest President of my generation, Ronald Wilson Reagan. The TEA Party reminds me of the way Republicans, led by Ronaldus Magnus, were back then: plain-spoken, good-humored, honest-to-a-fault, servants of the people, whom you were just as likely to find at St. Peter’s Orphanage’s Annual Picnic in Memphis, TN, as you were at the New York Metropolitan Opera.

In fact, I and my fiancee sent a wedding invitation to President and Mrs. Reagan, and got back and official congratulations card, signed by them, from the Office of Protocol.

The Obamas think “class” is something they skipped to go “choom”.

But, I digress…

The blemish on Reagan’s record that Liberals from both sides of the aisle, are bring up right now, is his passage of a law granting Amnesty to illegal aliens.

Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 because he strongly believed that it was time to gain control of U.S. borders and to enforce legal hiring at workplaces.

The amnesty of 3 million illegal immigrants that came with it was relatively small, and never would have resulted in 11 million new immigrants in the decades that followed had the rest of the law’s requirements been fulfilled by Congress.

Of course, they weren’t.

According to Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, amnesty was in fact Reagan’s biggest regret, per a story in the Heritage Times, because he, like the people who supported him, believed in the rule of law.

As the halcyon days of the Reagan Administration passed by, and time moved on, the Republican Party slowly, but surely, began to distance themselves from us rubes living out here in America’s Heartland, otherwise known as “Flyover Country”.

And, as they became more isolated from the people they were supposed to be serving, they started losing elections. Sure, Dubya was elected for two terms (Thank God.), but, can you imagine either Al Gore or John Kerry as President? Without throwing up, that is?

With the election of Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm), and with the Democrats controlling both the House and Senate,this nation was taken on a madcap plunge toward socialism faster than Elvis going down the last hill on the Zippin Pippin at the old Mid-South Fairgrounds.

And then, Americans stood up on their hind legs and started the TEA Party Movement.

Obama and the Democrats, and the Status Quo-loving Establishment Republicans, could not believe their eyes. “What was this mess? How dare these sheep break away from the flock!”

While Obama and the Democrats attacked us every which-way they could think us, accusing us of RAAACIIISM, carrying guns to rallies, etc., the “Moderate” Republicans, played it very cagey. They used the TEA Party during the months leading up to the 2010 Mid-terms, to get themselves elected, and win back the House of Representatives, on the promise that they would govern “Conservatively”.

Allow me to pause for a moment and say this: I am not speaking about actual Reagan Conservatives and TEA Party Members like Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and sometimes, Rand Paul. I am speaking of those Vichy Republicans, like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and Marco Rubio, who should just switch parties, and get it over with.

In the two years since the TEA Party propelled them to victory in the Mid-terms, the Establishment Republicans, who rode our coat tails back to the Halls of Power, have increasingly treated us badly, at first, shunning Conservatives like we were red-headed step-children, and now, insulting and degrading us like we are lepers…or their enemy.

And now, with Obama failing miserably, tanking in every single Popularity Poll, making about as much sense as a punch-drunk boxer, the Republicans appear ready to commit mass seppuku (hari kari), as I wrote yesterday, “snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory”  by pushing for Amnesty for illegal aliens, in order to supply their Big Money Donors, in the US Chamber of Commerce, with cheap labor.

In fact, that’s not the only issue that the Vichy Republicans are wussing out on…and it has Senator Ted Cruz worried, as he told Breitbart.com:

Cruz questioned how establishment Republicans unilaterally caving to Democrats on everything from the farm bill to the budget to the debt ceiling and more could think amnesty is a good idea at this time.

“Right now, Republican leadership in both chambers is aggressively urging members to stand down on virtually every front: on the continuing resolution, on the budget, on the farm bill, on the debt ceiling,” Cruz said in a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News on Thursday.

He continued:

They may or may not be right, but their argument is that we should focus exclusively on Obamacare and on jobs. In that context, why on earth would the House dive into immigration right now? It makes no sense, unless you’re Harry Reid. Republicans are poised for an historic election this fall–a conservative tidal wave much like 2010. The biggest thing we could do to mess that up would be if the House passed an amnesty bill–or any bill perceived as an amnesty bill–that demoralized voters going into November. Rather than responding to the big-money lobbying on K Street, we need to make sure working-class Americans show up by the millions to reject Obamacare and vote out the Democrats. Amnesty will ensure they stay home.

Cruz added that granting amnesty now–while wrong in his opinion at any time–would ensure Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid remains in his position in after the 2014 elections.

“Amnesty is wrong in any circumstance, and if we are going to fix our broken immigration system–and we should–it makes much more sense to do so next year, so that we are negotiating a responsible solution with a Republican Senate majority rather than with Chuck Schumer,” Cruz said. “Anyone pushing an amnesty bill right now should go ahead and put a ‘Harry Reid for Majority Leader’ bumper sticker on their car, because that will be the likely effect if Republicans refuse to listen to the American people and foolishly change the subject from Obamacare to amnesty.”

I wish we had a Senate full of Ted Cruzs and Mike Lees.

Ronald Reagan once quipped,

The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Evidently, that applies to Vichy Republicans, as well.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama and Obamacare: Obama Tries to Close Pandora’s Box

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

obamababyYesterday morning, the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, appeared before the American People in a hastily-called Press Conference, is a desperate attempt to undo the disastrous effects of his Signature Legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

Here are excerpts from his prepared statement, courtesy whitehouse.gov:

Already, people who have plans that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if they haven’t changed. That was already in the law. That’s what’s called a grandfather clause. It was included in the law. Today, we’re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect.

“The bottom line, President Obama said, is that “insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.”

“So we’re going to do everything we can to help the Americans who’ve received these cancellation notices,” President Obama said. “But there are also 40 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. And I am not going to walk away from 40 million people who have the chance to get health insurance for the first time.”

It took 100 years for us to even get to the point where we could start talking about and implementing a law to make sure everybody has got health insurance. And my pledge to the American people is, is that we’re going to solve the problems that are there, we’re going to get it right, and the Affordable Care Act is going to work for the American people.

Shortly after this Dog & Pony Show was over, the reality of Obama’s promises started to be questioned.

TheBlaze.com is among a lot of others who immediately asked the question…

Does Obama Have Legal Authority to Alter Obamacare, Laws Passed by Congress?

President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about his signature health care law, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013, in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama intends to permit continued sale of individual insurance plans that have been canceled because they failed to meet coverage standards under the health care law, officials said Thursday. (AP/Charles Dharapak)

“The short answer is no,” David Corbin, a professor of politics at King’s College in New York, told TheBlaze.

“However, the way he’s been operating on this bill is that he can make alterations as he goes along,” Corbin said. “And so far, he’s been allowed to get away with it.”

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”

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Historically, the executive branch has not been allowed to alter laws passed by Congress, he said, adding that there is a constitutional argument to be made.

Corbin cited section one, article one of the U.S. Constitution: “‘All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.’”

“The president certainly has some regulatory and prosecutorial discretion in how he executes the law, but he has no legislative power,” Corbin said. “If his actions in this case (waiver, extensions, etc.) amount to him becoming a lawmaker rather than a law executor, they are unconstitutional.”

Though the Constitution is clear that “all legislative powers” belong to Congress, Corbin said it sometimes comes down to how those in power choose to “interpret” the law.

“I’m not sure he will be able to get away with it in this case because I think people are going to understand that if you are going to remove the law of any legal standing by having the enforcement mechanisms or the penalties stripped out, then what is the law?” the professor added.

Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean reportedly questioned if Obama really has the “legal authority to do this” when discussing the proposed change to the law, Fox News’ Bret Baier tweeted.

During a briefing before the presidential press conference, officials reportedly told members of the press that the White House does have the authority to delay enforcement for a year.

“HHS will be using its enforcement discretion to allow for this transition,” the official said, according to the Washington Times. “Enforcement discretion can be used generally in transitions, as well as a bridge towards legislation. This is something that has been used, for example, with the deferred action for childhood arrivals policy, pending immigration reform.”

Here’s Obama’s other problem: What if the State Insurance Commissioners refuse to co-operate?

Like Washington’s State Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler, for example?

Within two hours of President Obama’s news conference announcing the proposed administrative fix for Americans upset by their policy cancellations, Kreidler issued a statement rejecting the proposal.

“I understand that many people are upset by the notices they have recently received from their health plans and they may not need the new benefits [in the Affordable Care Act] today,” he said. “But I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Kreidler’s statement continued. “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”

Kreidler said his office estimated that 290,000 people in Washington will need to buy new coverage for 2014 and that at least half of them will qualify for a premium subsidy if they purchase a plan through the state’s online insurance exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder.

“I encourage anyone who is shopping for new health plans — whether you’ve been uninsured or have received a cancellation notice from your insurer — to look at all of your options,” he said.

I was reading accounts of Obama’s Press Conference at work yesterday. What they revealed was a flailing swimmer who should have stayed in the Kiddie Pool…a discombobulated President, rambling in such a desperate fashion, that it appeared that he was looking for something…anything…to save his Signature Legislature and the hopes of the Democratic Party in both 2014 and 2016.

The problem for Obama and the Dems is: they own this fiasco. Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare in the middle of that dark night.

Hopefully, the Vichy Republicans will not pull defeat from the jaws of victory by proposing their own version of Obamacare, as Senator Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, alluded to yesterday.

If your opponent is digging himself into a hole…stand back and let him finish.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Shutdown: Will the Republicans Snatch Defeat Out of the Jaws of Victory?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics11 Comments

boehnercrying

There is an old political adage which states,

If your opponent is digging a hole for himself, get out of the way. If you can, lend a hand.

Republicans do not seem to realize that they’ve got a good thing going. The American public has had it up to here with the antics of their Petulant President, and the political pendulum is beginning to swing to the right again. The problem is, the Republican Establishment’s Vichy inclinations are handicapping them from taking advantage of the egregious behavior of the Manchurian President.

According to the great American Economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell,

If the continued existence of mathematics depended on the ability of the Republicans to defend the proposition that two plus two equals four, that would probably mean the end of mathematics and of all the things that require mathematics.

Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, epitomized what has been wrong with the Republicans for decades when he emerged from a White House meeting last Wednesday, went over to the assembled microphones, briefly expressed his disgust with the Democrats’ intransigence and walked on away.

We are in the midst of a national crisis, immediately affecting millions of Americans and potentially affecting the kind of country this will become if ObamaCare goes into effect — and yet, with multiple television network cameras focused on Speaker Boehner as he emerged from the White House, he couldn’t be bothered to prepare a statement that would help clarify a confused situation, full of fallacies and lies.

Boehner was not unique in having a blind spot when it comes to recognizing the importance of articulation and the need to put some serious time and effort into presenting your case in a way that people outside the Beltway would understand. On the contrary, he has been all too typical of Republican leaders in recent decades.

When the government was shut down during the Clinton administration, Republican leaders who went on television to tell their side of the story talked about “OMB numbers” versus “CBO numbers” — as if most people beyond the Beltway knew what these abbreviations meant or why the statistics in question were relevant to the shutdown. Why talk to them in Beltway-speak?

When Speaker Boehner today goes around talking about the “CR,” that is just more of the same thinking — or lack of thinking. Policy wonks inside the Beltway know that he is talking about the “continuing resolution” that authorizes the existing level of government spending to continue, pending a new budget agreement.

But, believe it or not, there are lots of citizens and voters outside the Beltway. And what is believed by those people whom too many Republicans are talking past can decide not only the outcome of this crisis but the fate of the nation for generations to come.

You might think that the stakes are high enough for Republicans to put in some serious time trying to clarify their message.

As the great economist Alfred Marshall once said, facts do not speak for themselves. If we are waiting for the Republicans to do the speaking, the country is in big trouble.

What the heck does Boehner want? He’s got an out-of-control narcissist, punitively picking and choose which National Parks and Monuments to close down, while rolling out the Red Carpet for protesters, who are here illegally, to demonstrate, in front of God and everybody, on the National Mall.

On top of that, he’s got a Speaker of the Senate, from the Opposition Party, asking why Congress should be worried about saving a Pediatric Cancer Patient’s life!

Obama’s and the Democrats’ bungling of the whole Government Shutdown, has left a gaping maw of a Public Relations Hole big enough for The Speaker of the House to drive a semi-truck through.

However, Cryin’ John and his Republican Elite cronies, for all of their public protestations, seem to be stuck in their typical “reach across the aisle” mode.

Boehner needs to hold a scorcher of a press conference every day, hammering Obama and his minions on their refusal to negotiate. He needs to point out how many “mini-funding” bills they’ve passed in the House to attempt to keep parts of the government funded during the President’s Temper Tantrum.

In fact, today, he needs to hold a press conference about passing a bill yesterday to fund survivors’ benefits for the families of our Best and Brightest who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country.

Right now, the Republicans actually seem to be united in their opposition to the Petulant President and his punitive punishment of American Citizens.

It would be an absolutely politically ignorant move to fall back on their Vichy Republican ways and capitulate to the Presidents’ wishes to spend our nation into oblivion.

Put a muzzle on John McCain and a leash on his pet dog, Lindsey Graham, and tell that out-of touch Mitch McConnell to sit down, Boehner, you’ve got this.

Now is not the time for surrender.

Now is the opportunity to stand up on your hind legs, Republicans, and actually do what you were sent to Capitol Hill to do: represent your constituency.

Now is not the time to be timid and inarticulate, Republicans.

 It is time to fight for the American people, like your jobs depended on it

Because, they do.

Until He comes,

KJ