More frustrations from the Grand Old Party

I've already expressed that I feel as though I'm a conservative without a party. And I am far from alone in this feeling. Well, looks like top Republicans, from the presumptive presidential nominee to congressional leadership, are pissing off conservatives once more. Surprise. There's too many stories going on simultaneously to write about separately, so I'll just touch on each one of these frustrations.

First, on last night's program, Mark Levin started in on the Republican leadership's decision to, in effect, drop the push for the Keystone XL pipeline. (via theHill)

Republicans are pressing for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a final House-Senate transportation bill but appear unlikely to draw a line in the sand that jeopardizes the infrastructure legislation.

Can we say, 'weak'? Then Levin's discussion and focus quickly turned towards Boehner over suggestions that the Republican leadership may be planning to keep so-called 'popular' parts of Obamacare, even if the SCOTUS strikes it down in its entirety! (via Politico)

House Republican leaders are quietly hatching a plan of attack as they await a historic Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama’s health care law.

If the law is partially or fully overturned they’ll draw up bills to keep the popular, consumer-friendly portions in place — like allowing adult children to remain on parents’ health care plans until age 26, and forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Ripping these provisions from law is too politically risky, Republicans say.

...Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave the entire House Republican Conference a preview of where the party is heading. His message: “When the court rules, we’ll be ready.”

But Boehner warned that they’ll relegislate the issue in smaller, bite sizes, rather than putting together an unwieldy new health care bill.

“If all or part of the law is struck down, we are not going to repeat the Democrats’ mistakes,” Boehner said, according to several sources present. “We have better ideas on health care — lots of them. We have solutions, of course, for patients with pre-existing conditions and other challenges.”

Anybody remember handing the House over to Boehner and increase Republican membership in the Senate in 2010 to keep ANY of Obamacare? HELL NO! If this is the continued leadership of John Boehner, then he MUST GO as Speaker of the House.

By the way, you might recall that Rush Limbaugh & Michael Steele joined the tea party movement & the Social Security Institute back in '09 to demand that the GOP Senate stops ObamaCare by any means necessary, while Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s strategy was to accommodate Democrats by allowing the chamber to debate and vote on amendments.. And as Daniel Horowitz reminds us yesterday over at RedState, Yes, many Republicans supported Obamacare all along.

Many of us have taken it for granted that all Republicans would work for full repeal of Obamacare. After all, not a single Republican voted for it. However, it is always important to understand the reasons why politicians support or oppose a piece of legislation.

When you listen to many prominent Republicans voicing their disdain for Obamacare, you generally hear the following complaints: it raises taxes, it cuts Medicare, it contains death panels, it is 2,700 pages long – and most notably – the individual mandate.

The problem is that these are all ancillary to the crux of what is so offensive about Obamacare. The overarching concern about Obamacare is that it harnesses the factors that have already driven up the cost of healthcare and health insurance, most prominently, the mandates and subsidies, and multiplies them to the nth degree. The tax increases, Medicare cuts, and individual mandate are merely tools to fund those interventions. Many Republicans never had a problem with them. This is why they were never repulsed by Romneycare, which doesn’t contain tax hikes and Medicare cuts. As for the individual mandate of MassCare, they contend that there is nothing wrong with a state mandate.

Before we inevitably segway to Romney, Horowitz also references the Politico piece, expressing his struggle with determining "whether Republicans lack a full understanding of the free market or whether they simply lack the communication skills and fortitude to articulate free market positions to the public," realizing that it's probably both, and concluding, "We better pray that the Supreme Court rules in our favor on severability and strikes down the entire law."

So, onto Romney...

Well, word came out that a conservative group was readying plans to launch attack ads targeting Obama's long and controversial relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. You can hop over to theBlaze to check out the clips of Wright that were exclusively obtained this morning. But the frustrating-as-Hell part came today when Romney repudiated the PAC's ad strategy. (via Townhall)

“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described. I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity — particularly for those in the middle class of America. And I think what we’ve seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination. I hope that isn’t the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about … It’s interesting that we’re talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he’s doing, and saying ‘why is he running an attack campaign? Why isn’t he talking about his record?’”

Ok, this is not civil or rising above the fray, folks. It's yet another display of weakness. Where was this Romney during the primary? Where was this civility when he launched the most negative Republican campaign we've seen in modern times against his conservative contenders? So now that he's secured his spot as the nominee, that's it? Talk about an Etch-a-Sketch! This is the kind of crap that conservatives have warned about throughout the primary: Romney, and the Republican Establishment, care more about defeating conservatism than they do about defeating a statist, post-American president. This politically-correct civility won't cut it when it comes to saving the nation from forces that want to 'remake' it. Obama will do ANYTHING to win...but apparently Romney's hands are tied.

Then to top it off, or rather put the whip cream on the side (no cherry), McRINO the Maverick is teaming up with Democrats to craft a campaign finance reform bill (his favorite topic) that will benefit, wait for it...Democrats. (via theHill)

Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year’s elections to disclose their donors.

McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress’s leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years.

Good-government advocates who worked with McCain in the 1990s and early 2000s had begun to think he’d given up on the issue. But McCain said Tuesday he could join Democrats once again to form a bipartisan coalition, even though it would annoy the Republican leadership.

I doubt it, John. Your other buddy John [Boehner], and many of the rest in leadership positions, have shown us in many cases now that they're all bark and no bite (and many times, not even that, but just going-along and playing it up for the cameras).

The cowardly Establishment is destroying the Republican Party, folks; and with it, the Country. So will you help to relocate these career hacks to private life when it comes to your primaries and elections, or will you continue to help them slide on into the rot? Talk about frustrating.