Jim Bratten
In 2001, President George W. Bush said we shouldn’t be concerned, just go shopping as usual. He refused to name the enemy radical Islamists, preferring to call them “terrorists.” Throughout his two terms we witnessed one compromise after another; no push-back on Democrats or their lap-dog media. His veto pen had no ink. Progressives held the high ground, weren’t challenged; Congress was lost in 2006, and the presidency got a radical leftist in 2008.
Barack Obama was unquestionable, virtually unchallenged, and unvetted. He was black and the Republicans were afraid. Unable to make the distinction between race and ideology, the GOP was hamstrung. They refused to go on offense, even as their country was degraded and our Constitution repeatedly violated. Republican leadership, intimidated by Democrats’ false accusations of racism and bigotry, refused to challenge the false narrative. This remains the case today; they cower and hide.
The conservative Tea Party movement recaptured the House for Republicans in 2010. John Boehner took the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi in 2011 then abandoned principle for donor desires. A plea to defund Obamacare piece-by-piece, signed by 127 GOP members of the House was denied. When a proposal to expose members of the Muslim Brotherhood, inserted in the DHS and DOD by the Obama Regime, was put forth by six GOP House members, Boehner refused to consider it. Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to submit a budget, so Speaker Boehner agreed to use “continuing resolutions” (CRs) to fund the government and allowed the debt ceiling to be raised at will.
Republican leadership nominated another moderate in the 2012 presidential election who refused to attack his Democrat opponent, giving Barack Obama a second term to complete his “transformation.” The Justice Department, IRS, State, and other agencies were now completely politicized.
Conservatives gave the Senate to Republicans in 2014 and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sat idle. Obamacare was not defunded, Dodd-Frank survived, the military became a social engineering laboratory, and Islamist barbarism continued to spread. Racial division stoked by Obama’s DOJ in Ferguson, Baltimore, Portland, and elsewhere flourished behind a social justice façade. Our culture slid further into the pit; DACA, illegal alien amnesty, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and Planned Parenthood funding, all unconstitutional, were given a pass.
Immigration and open borders are moral issues, but Republicans didn’t explain them that way, if at all. The wishes of their donors and the Chamber of Commerce prevailed. GOP promises to repeal Obamacare in the 2016 election again failed. Now Obamacare is more popular with Democrats than ever, even though it continues its nosedive to oblivion. Republicans continue to fumble explanations of why it will always fail, what it was really designed to do, and why it’s patently unconstitutional.
Traditionally conservative Americans were finally fed up with the spinelessness of a supposed “opposition” party, so in 2016 they elected Donald Trump as president and kept the House and Senate in Republican hands. They wanted a fighter who would turn back Democrats, repair Obama’s destruction, and drain the corrupt “Swamp.”
Two years of majority in Congress showed little accomplishment, aside from court appointments, as the Republican establishment dragged its feet, and Trump virtually had to “go it alone.” The anti-Trumpers in Congress waited for Mueller, buying into the Russia-Trump Hoax.
Patriotic Americans have several dozen brave House members and a handful of conservative senators who support the man they placed in the White House, and two more Supreme Court justices. That’s it.
Even with the departure of dozens of GOP moderates in 2018, many cowards remain: Spectators instead of participants.
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