The Party of Suicide and the Party of Surrender
Johnny Cirucci Johnny@JohnnyCirucci.com 17 August 2012, 0942 EST
I always laugh ruefully when my frustrated friends say “Republican or Democrat, they’re all the same.” The reality is that the Democrats are at least honest about their agenda. They tell you what they’re going to do and they carry it out with ruthless vigor every chance they get. The Republicans are much more sly. They give the appearance of being the “opposition party,” to stand for life, liberty and property when what they really are is “just glad to be here.”
But the latest effort to further empower perhaps the most destructive man ever to sit in the highest office in the world went by with shockingly little coverage by the media.
It was the Republican-controlled House passing a Senate bill sponsored by hard-Left Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) but bolstered by Republican stalwarts like Jon Kyl (R, AZ), Richard Lugar (R, IN), Mitch McConnell (R, KY) and the inseparable duo of destruction, Susan Collins (R, ME) & Joseph Lieberman (I, CT) (more on them later). Adding the New England Nude Model from the National Guard—Scott Brown (R, MA)—was just icing on the cake.
Astoundingly, the bill basically abrogates much of the Senate’s Constitutional responsibility to confirm presidential appointments.
Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution states;
The President…shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law…
As noted by the Heritage Foundation;
The Appointments Clause is “among the significant structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme” and “is a bulwark against one branch aggrandizing its power at the expense of another branch.”
What is astounding is that this kind of “co-operative bipartisanship” only runs one direction. The Democrat Party would never join hands with an ideologically Right-minded Republican effort, especially one that was so damaging to their agenda.
S 679 is only the latest example in a very long list that perhaps should begin with Mr. Obama’s former presidential opponent, John McCain, whose party loyalty can best be shown by the plethora of George W. Bush’s judicial nominations he ceded to the Senate Democrat minority.
But such examples are legion.
No, it’s the efforts of the current Congress pushing to empower the current president that one finds both stunning and disturbing.
As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council noted regarding the Senate’s original approval process of Barack Obama’s cabinet back in January of 2009;
Yesterday’s confirmation hearings for Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Education-designate Arne Duncan looked more like a love fest than the vetting that is associated with confirmations. For the second day, Republicans completely failed to pressure the liberal nominees on any of the important social and family issues they’ll face in their respective departments.
One would’ve at least thought the confirmation of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State would’ve been good for some fireworks. The former Senator who, before that, held a resume that simply stated, “Bill’s wife (and bimbo buster),” was the focus of so many scandals she could’ve kept mid-day soap plots going for a decade. But not only did the Senate shoo her in, they actually put extensive effort into quelling questions.
Michelle Malkin recently noted with dour cynicism that the same Republicans who are now full of bluster and smoke to take Eric Holder’s head were only too happy to approve him for his promotion.
As “Secretary of Health and Human Services” Obama appointed one of the most virulent proponents of abortion ever to hold public office (next to Barack Obama, that is)—Kathleen Sebelius—who coveted and harbored third trimester abortion specialist, George “the Killer” Tiller. The absence of harsh or even simply strong cross-examination by the Senate was mind-boggling. Sebelius was easily confirmed.
Senate confirmation was avoided altogether during the installment of Barack Obama’s massive shadow government. However, I’m sure that even the pro-man/boy-sex “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings still wouldn’t have been too over-the-top for their approval.
Not even a Supreme Court justice candidate like Elena Kagan was a problem for Senate Republicans. Kagan has never been a judge, never argued a case in a courtroom, helped shield Saudi nationals from lawsuits after 9/11, publicly lamented the loss of a “coherent socialist movement in America,” was a staunch proponent—not just of abortion—but of the infanticide known as “partial-birth” abortion and likened the National Rifle Association to the KKK.
Once the Democrats realized that they had gained the White House and both House and Senate, it was time to push like the devil for their generation-old holy grail: the socialization of 1/6th of the entire U.S. economy—a power-grab of unprecedented proportion. Not only did Republicans in the Senate walk away with a whimper, establishment Republicans in the House lead by John Boehner wouldn’t touch it, either.
Americans looked to the remaining few bulldog, Red State ideologues like Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from the “guns and bibles” state of Oklahoma, to put up some level of resistance, but it was Coburn who said of Obama:
“We consider each other friends…Not friends like everybody in the Senate says, but real friends.”
Feeling had, the American people reacted in the only way they thought was acceptable: sending a wave of Tea Party Representatives into the House. All the Republicans had to do was sit and wait for the cavalry.
Instead, they donned war bonnets and rushed to help the Indians do as much damage as they could on the way out. The most egregious example being the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that kept homosexuals serving in the military, doing so, quietly. It was pure, bold-faced, hard-Left agenda. No one in the military was saying, “Gee, you know what would make us that much better at what we do…?” The Republican establishment made it happen.
As the 2011 fiscal year came to a close, the Republican House created a firestorm by seeking to use the annual National Defense Authorization Act as an opportunity to make the “War on Terror” a permanent institution. The 2012 NDAA took the temporary war-fighting powers granted to the Executive via the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and ensconced them, such as the indefinite detention of terror suspects without trial.
Although SEC. 1022 (b)(1) states;
The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.
—SEC. 1021 (b)(1) and (2) define a “covered person” as anyone who assisted in 9/11 or;
A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
Being able to arbitrarily define a “covered person” who has “committed a belligerent act” or has “directly supported such hostilities” is a shocking aggrandizement of an already terrible power wielded by the Executive, especially in light of Mr. Obama’s execution without trial or due process of American-born Anwar al Awlaki.
In the midst of dramatic controversy over what some have considered draconian over-reach via “SOPA” and “PIPA” in the “fight against online piracy,” it was the afore-mentioned Lieberman-Collins team that sought to end-run them all by simply handing Barack Obama an “internet kill switch” that wasn’t even subject to judicial review.
The United Nations’ “Law of the Sea Treaty” has been called a gateway to world government, yet a cabal of Republicans were gearing up to hand it to Barack Obama before it was killed (and we are sure to see it again in the near future).
The amount of debt we are told politicians have racked up on behalf of every man woman and child in America has grown to levels that are so severe, some are saying a guaranteed collapse is on our horizon. Perhaps one could make a case for using the “T-word”—to knowingly or willing enact polices that cripple the nation can and should be labeled as “treason.” Here, again, the Republican Party has shown an amazing fizzle in the fire to regain fiscal responsibility before that happens. Instead, Senate leaders like Mitch McConnell (R, KY) proposed to give Obama more authority to borrow and increase the debt to even higher, staggering proportions.
In 1996, the Republican-controlled House gave Democrat Bill Clinton the power to specifically cut portions of the budget he didn’t approve. The Supreme Court struck it down as an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers. This did not slow the Republicans down who are again trying to give another hard-Left Democrat the ability to cut portions of the budget he doesn’t like. Given Barack Obama’s sentiments towards America, I find this questionable, to say the least.
The Republican House authored a bill that makes the American political class a veritable royal Ruling Elite, around which, your Constitutional rights need not apply. We are quickly losing the nation we’ve known and it’s the “opposition party” that is making it happen.
I guess in terms of deeds, not words, my friends are correct. Both parties are essentially the same: cancerous.