The Big Government so-called ‘conservative’ media establishment has come to life in support of John Boehner’s plan of capitulation that will ultimately increase our national debt from over $14 trillion and 62 percent of GDP today to over $23 trillion and 92 percent of GDP in ten years. What progress! But that’s not the kicker. Those who once told us not to be so divisive or say harsh things against our new President, now trash their conservative colleagues, along with the constituency that ushered in their November landslide victory. Yeah, who’d a thought we actually wanted them to ACT against run-away government and stop the statist Democrats?!
So the attacks began early Wednesday morning with The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.
After lifting the title of one of Reagan’s greatest speeches, A Time for Choosing, in the same mocking manner as you’d expect from a liberal, Kristol says that a vote against John Boehner’s weak plan is to vote with Pelosi and support Obama, and adds insult to injury by calling those who disagree with the Boehner plan ”the pro-Obama right.” Rather than admit to the faults of Boehner’s plan or actually investigate why conservatives don’t prefer it, Kristol takes personal offense to questioning, or in his term, “defeating”, the Great Speaker, stating that conservatives are somehow incapable of doing more or going further. Cut, Cap and Balance, Bill Kristol, Cut, Cap and Balance. How hard did you fight for that? Reinstituting that bill and standing firm on its reaffirmation, instead of suddenly finding courage to fight for an infinitely weaker-Speaker bill, should be explanation enough, if you’ve been paying attention, Bill, instead of sniping at principled conservatives as ‘masquerading self-indulgent sectarians’. As a rebuttal, FreedomWorks tallied through the laundry list of bad advice Kristol has given to Republicans over the past decade, to which the Party “followed right into minority status in 2006.”
Levin discusses this ‘brilliant’ piece as well…
Like Kristol, an unnamed Wall Street Journal Op-ed entitled, The GOP’s Reality Test, ventures further in its snarkiness, trashing Jim DeMint and others, along with the same conservative activist groups that Kristol took aim at, Club for Growth and Heritage Action.
Strangely, some Republicans and conservative activists are condemning this as a fiscal sellout. Senator Jim DeMint put out a statement raking the Speaker for seeking "a better political debt deal, instead of a debt solution" (emphasis, needless to say, his). The usually sensible Club for Growth and Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, are scoring a vote for the Boehner plan as negative on similar grounds.
This piece goes on to falsely, and insultingly, claim that conservative opposed to the Boehner plan have no “alternative strategy for achieving anything nearly as fiscally or politically beneficial as Mr. Boehner's plan.” Are you kidding me? Again, Cut, Cap and Balance, there's a stand-alone Balanced Budget Amendment, and then Connie Mack’s Penny Plan. But those hold less leverage and achievability than the genius plan that Boehner has developed, right? Uh, no. Now here’s the unnamed writer’s assumption:
The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. [if I may interject, no one has ever made that claim] Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor. This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.
And the kind of ‘crack political thinking’ that writes this dribble has lost the Republican Party election after election, and gave us Nancy Pelosi as a Speaker, Harry Reid as a Senate Majority Leader, and Barack Obama as a President! Furthermore, Jeffrey Lord provides additional conservative ammunition:
It is precisely the political thinking that made United States Senators out of Florida's Marco Rubio, Utah's Mike Lee, Kentucky's Rand Paul, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey and Wisconsin's Ron Johnson. When the Ruling Class was cheering in primaries for the likes of Charlie Crist, Robert Bennett, Arlen Specter and Trey Grayson. If there is a political rule that says conservatives must win every single election then turn-about is fair play. How does one explain the crack Establishment political thinking that turned moderates Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman into GOP Senate and gubernatorial nominees? And why is there an Obama Administration in the first place? Wasn't nominating the moderate John McCain supposed to save the day because, you know, all GOP moderates win elections? Ahhh the walk down memory lane when one visits the presidential libraries of great Republican moderate presidents from Dewey to Dole.
Nevertheless, Arizona’s very own RINOsaurus John McCain was so inspired by this piece in its loathing of the tea party movement, targeting two fantastic conservative ladies who lost their Senate bids to a Marxist and the mental patient running the Senate, that he had to parrot the most offensive portions of it on the Senate floor…
Oh, and you wanna hear something really ‘bizarro’?
Way to go, Arizona…
‘Well, what are you gonna do? Huh, huh, what are you gonna do?’ Besides already repeating daily what we ‘would have done’, I have to ask, does this entire Establishment disclosure not remind you of a particular tactic? Let’s see, what was that again…oh yeah…
Alinsky’s Rule #12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
Huh, thought they would have at least attempted to turn this against the statist liberals. Guess the enabling Establishment had other plans after conservatives delivered them victory after victory in November...like declaring victory by surrendering?
You know, as Levin later explained, when Democrat's are in the minority, they act the same as they do in the majority...they don't give an inch! But what do we do in the minority? Our leaders compromise and capitulate and shoot their own caucus members in the back.
I think Jedediah Bila stated it extremely well when she said, “Like many Americans, I am hungry for bold, principled, unapologetic conservative leadership. Rather than settling for what they think they can get through, I’d like to see GOP leadership fighting for what they know they should get through, for what they know would help restore this country. There’s no time for complacency, defeatist attitudes or taking the easy way out. John Boehner doesn’t have an easy job, but he must begin to play hard and fight to win. The country can’t afford anything less.” And when she says ‘play hard and fight to win’, somehow I don’t think she had in mind telling your own party members to "get your ass in line" behind your plan, Mr. Speaker.
I think Jedediah Bila stated it extremely well when she said, “Like many Americans, I am hungry for bold, principled, unapologetic conservative leadership. Rather than settling for what they think they can get through, I’d like to see GOP leadership fighting for what they know they should get through, for what they know would help restore this country. There’s no time for complacency, defeatist attitudes or taking the easy way out. John Boehner doesn’t have an easy job, but he must begin to play hard and fight to win. The country can’t afford anything less.” And when she says ‘play hard and fight to win’, somehow I don’t think she had in mind telling your own party members to "get your ass in line" behind your plan, Mr. Speaker.
News Flash: This November will be about more than ridding Washington of statist Democrats...the enablers must go as well. That should give you media elites something to write about.
UPDATE: Jeffrey Lord properly zeros in on the divide in the modern conservative movement by comparing yesterday's WSJ editorial with today's editorial, The Road to Downgrade, and what's precisely missing...
There is no mention in today's editorial recounting the history of entitlements telling of those conservatives who fought tooth and nail against the creation of this welfare state in real time. There is nary a mention of the tremendous political heat taken by conservatives, leaders who were thoroughly trashed in the day not just by Democrats but a lot of Republicans. It's as ifRobert Taft, William Knowland, Barry Goldwater, the pre-presidential Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley -- and yes the Sharron Angles and Christine O'Donnell's of the day never existed.
Why is that important?
Because the implications of yesterday's WSJeditorial and the similar one from Bill Kristol over at theWeekly Standard echo precisely the ridicule and scorn that was directed at opponents of the growing entitlement state from the late 1940s all the way through the 1980 Reagan election and beyond.
The Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys and Mark Levins of the day -- some elected, some not -- were in fact out there in the "old days." But they were marginalized because they refused to accept the idea that there was no other alternative to a continually growing federal government and an endless rise in the debt.
Lord points out the irony of the same "Ruling Class" attitude lobbed towards conservatives, that lingers on, even with a conservative movement that has been strengthened through the events of a Reagan presidency, growth in conservative organizations and success on the talkshow circuits, along with the ushering in of more principly conservative members of Congress, recognizing that the current crop of Establishment types view the conservative idea of Principle over Party personalities as unrealistic, "because they have seen exactly what happened when the wisdom of those conservatives of yesterday was ignored as liberals went on heedlessly building the entitlement state the WSJ documents today," disregarding, as the WSJ and others have, that their shared mentality led to that very marginalization.
