Conservative Republicans

Dispute Between Chris Christie And Eric Cantor On Disaster Relief: The Splintering Of Republican Unity!

Ronald Leave a comment

After the disastrous flooding damage that has been visited on New Jersey and Vermont, in particular, after Hurricane Irene, a dispute has developed between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of the “darlings” of the Tea Party Movement and conservative Republicans, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Cantor has been saying that budget cuts to match disaster relief funds must be negotiated before aid can be dispensed, a stand that led the usually blustery Christie to make clear that such a stand was unacceptable, while people in his state waited for weeks or months for aid to recover from the hurricane.

On this, of course, Christie is absolutely right, and already it seems that Cantor may be bending, as it is MORALLY corrupt to take such a stand in a time of trouble!

The splintering of Republican unity has begun, as even the Tea Party Governors, having to deal with reality on the ground, are not going to be able, politically, to take the harsh stand that Congressional House Republicans are taking, sitting on their “thrones”, pontificating on the virtues of cutting spending in the face of terrible human suffering!

This dispute and split is great for the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama, as it will help to portray the GOP as the party of the elite rich, which only cares about the welfare of the wealthy among us, so let’s give a salute to Chris Christie for speaking up for his beleaguered citizens, and hope, at the same time, that Eric Cantor and his ilk, including Paul Ryan, take their “lumps” over this outrageous stand against quick hurricane relief!

The False Promise Of The “Balanced Budget” Constitutional Amendment

Ronald Leave a comment

Tea Party activists and conservative Republicans, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, are touting the idea of a constitutional amendment to force a balanced budget on the nation in the future.

This is nothing new, as it was proposed in the past by Republicans in the 1980s and 1990s, and never went anywhere.

These political leaders seem to forget that a constitutional amendment requires a two thirds vote of the House of Representatives and a two thirds vote of the Senate, and then would need 38 states (three fourths) out of 50 to put it into the Constitution.

If this had been easy to do years ago, it would have been accomplished.

The fact is that the idea of such an amendment is preposterous, and will NEVER happen!

Who can see 290 House members and 67 Senators agreeing to such an amendment, and no more than 12 states rejecting such an idea?

Who cannot understand that a one vote margin of defeat in one of the two houses of the state legislatures in no more than 13 states will kill such an amendment, if it ever made it through Congress?

This is a political ploy which will go nowhere, and were it to become part of the Constitution, it would create many crises whenever an emergency arose, whether war, natural disaster, or another economic downturn.

There is no way for anyone or any government to plan precisely on what emergencies will arise, so the amendment would cripple a government’s ability to respond.

So chalk the discussion up to political posturing, and nothing else!

The Meaning Of Our 235th Anniversary Of Independence

Ronald Leave a comment

The author of this blog can well remember the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, when Gerald Ford was President, and we had just recently come out from under the dual burdens of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.

There was great optimism at the time about the future of the world’s greatest democracy. Unfortunately, that optimism no longer exists.

Instead, we have great pessimism and negativism and partisanship, and we now face the threat of a bankruptcy and default of our government’s finances if the two major political parties cannot overcome their differences and do what is necessary for the national good.

We have tremendous ignorance in this country about the Fourth of July, whereby only 58 percent know its significance as the day we declared our independence to the world wide community of nations.

And we have tremendous propaganda about the Founding Fathers, who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, making them out to be god like, and also to have the views of right wing Republican conservatives, which all of them would have been horrified to imagine was the image being taught and propagated about them.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, despite what the right wing conservative Republicans claim, believed in a “United States”, not thirteen independent states going their own way, and the experiment with the Articles of Confederation proved how inept a government was that promoted so called “states rights”!

The concept that the Tea Party Movement promotes that they represent the true meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution is preposterous, as the Founding Fathers promoted the idea of a government of the people, not the states, and wanted the authority to promote effective and responsive government to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

That required a national government to promote the general welfare, justice, common defense, and the blessings of liberty. States rights were not primary, whether in 1787 or at the end of the Civil War in 1865!

The ultimate conclusion is that the Declaration of Independence was not condemning government or taxes. It was not promoting anarchy or reckless behavior, but rather responsible government that dealt with reality for the common good!

The Right Wing Has No Limits: REDSTATE’s War On Conservative Republicans As NOT Conservative Enough!

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REDSTATE is a right wing website of blogger Erick Erickson, and seeks to make the Republican Party as right wing as possible, failing to realize that the party will destroy itself if it goes that direction anymore than it is already!

In an entry this morning entitled “Conservatives Stand To Lose Big In 2012”, Erickson declares war on conservative Republicans in the Senate who he claims are not conservative enough!

On his hit list are the following Senators:

Richard Lugar of Indiana
Roger Wicker of Mississippi
Bob Corker of Tennessee

Also, such well known candidates for the Senate as the following are opposed as not conservative enough:

Former Congresswoman Heather Wilson of New Mexico
Former Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin

Ericikson also attacks such former Republican officeholders as former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, former Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, former Kentucky Attorney General Trey Greyson, and former Congressman Mike Castle of Delaware, treating them as if they are “poison”!

His declaration of war on the above, if successful, will marginalize the GOP to such an extent that it will lose all semblance of being a major political party, and maybe, just maybe, that is his intent, with the replacement of the GOP by an openly Fascist party, a la Benito Mussolini, Juan Peron, or Francisco Franco!