Jim Bratten
Republicans must reform their leadership and stop playing by Democrat rules. Stop pandering to progressives.
In-house, the Republican leadership’s penchant for pay-back didn’t take a hiatus with the departure of Paul Ryan from the speaker’s chair. His successor, Kevin McCarthy, carries on the tradition of self-flagellation; punishing conservative House members for conscientious, independent thought by treating them as outcasts.
Several years ago, conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) was punished by Speaker Boehner’s House leadership for voting against a massive agriculture bill that expanded food stamp spending exponentially. Stutzman was removed from the Agriculture Committee for keeping his promise to his constituents.
Recently, new Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) booted Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) off the Armed Services Committee because Hice voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) instead of McCarthy for the top leadership position. Hice and his constituents were punished by McCarthy for voting the “wrong way.” Pay-back, pure and simple; Republican House leadership still uses a firing squad against conservatives.
Far more serious, however, is abiding by Democrat rules; swallowing the leftist tripe and believing the GOP needs to cooperate with Democrats to be accepted as a fair, compassionate party.
Republican leadership punishes members of the House for failure to toe the politically correct rules of identity politics, particularly concerning race. GOP leadership continues to cower at “race-baiting” charges from the press and always caves to “racist” accusations from Democrats. They know it’s false, so they should laugh it off as dishonest attempts to divide the population. The attacks are ridiculous slander. Call it out as the hatred it is. Push back. But they don’t; Republican leadership always folds.
A perfect example of Democrats’ mindless racism rants were shown in the treatment of Rep. Steve King (R-IA) for honest comments he made concerning progressives’ favorite libelous slander: “white supremacism.” As usual, what King said was taken out of context and run through progressive outrage filters. He simply wanted to know what the reason was for the Democrats’ new racial accusation. One is told that, if born Caucasian, one suffers from racism and cannot be rehabilitated, unless one disavows heritage, history, and gets melanin replacement surgery. But that’s the objective, isn’t it? Delegitimize your political opponents or, as Democrats believe, your enemies. However, Republican leadership joined the Democrat outrage against King; McCarthy pulled him from all his committee assignments instead of explaining the conservative’s position. Kevin McCarthy cooperated, agreeing with Democrats’ identity politics, and dumped King.
Anyone who has two neurons to rub together to generate thoughts should understand that the whole white supremacism hype is exactly that. It was created in academia to denigrate and discredit Western Civilization as anything of virtue and value to be emulated or taught, and to concentrate Democrat minority victim outrage against evil white men, Donald Trump in particular. Republicans once more are duped by progressives, unwittingly (one would like to think) participating in the radical Democrats’ destructive cultural agenda.
GOP leadership should stand against the opposition, not alienate their members. They gave the House to Democrats through inaction and inattention to the public will. Reject the identity politics and mean it.
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