By: Daniel Horowitz January 28th, 2014 www.redstate.com
The big story for conservatives is not the
President’s State of the Union Address. It is the broken state of the
Republican Party – the party that is supposed to serve as a bulwark against the
poisonous ideas propagated in that speech.
It certainly is egregious that we have a president
who is brazenly implementing wage controls without congressional
approval. It is reprehensible that he speaks of inequality while promulgating
regulations that throw people off their healthcare and destroy jobs in
Appalachia.
But it is even more reprehensible that we have an
opposition party that is hell-bent on rubber stamping Obama’s agenda, while
engaging in a civil war with the party base that desires a bold contrast.
Obama is requesting endless debt ceiling
increases. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have made it clear they agree
with his fallacious premise about default and plan to raise it, yet somehow
extract concessions.
Obama has doubled down on Obamacare. Yet GOP
leaders are owned by lobbyists who have made it clear they will never repeal
the law.
Obama has shredded the Constitution and used
illegal administrative power to advance legislation that never passed
Congress. The GOP leadership has made it clear they will never use the
power of the purse vested in the House to clamp down on those illegal
maneuvers.
Obama talks about the endless need to intervene in
the private economy, yet Republicans are prepared to pass a $956 billion Farm
Bill, which locks in the President’s baseline for food stamp spending and
entrenches the federal government into every aspect of Agriculture.
Obama speaks of the need to make “investments” in
the nation, yet Republicans respond by passing a $1.1 trillion omnibus bill.
Obama panders to radical socially liberal interests
in order to remake our society, and Republicans are silent on “social issues.”
And finally, Obama speaks passionately about our
obligation to open our citizenship and welfare state to illegal aliens and the
rest of the world without limits, yet Republicans respond…..by offering the
same! Their alacrity to open our doors and pocketbooks to illegal aliens
has already empowered
the drug cartels to smuggle in more potential beneficiaries
and future Democrat voters.
On Politico’s front page you will find an article
titled “Boehner
Unchained,” which details the Speaker’s new mission to join
with Obama and fight conservatives. You will also find an article titled
“GOP
Ready to Surrender on Debt Ceiling.” Now couple that with
tomorrow’s vote on the Farm Bill, and we have a full-blown crisis within the
party.
Luckily, some members are starting to get the
message that the establishment doesn’t share our values. When the House passed
its version of the farm bill last year divorced from food stamp spending, we
warned that they would reinsert it back into the bill in conference. Not
only did they remarry agriculture with food stamps, the conference committee
gave Democrats almost everything they wanted among the disputed items with
House Republicans. There are even some environmental conservation
regulations that liberals never thought they’d win in the deal. Members
are finally starting to understand that we will always get rolled
during private negotiations.
And the reason is quite simple. GOP leaders
don’t share our values. To the extent they humor us with some shiny
objects it is designed to get the bills to conference so they can inject their
real priorities into the final agreement. Now some House conservatives
are getting a taste of what a potential immigration conference committee would
look like.
We all know that this president is dangerous.
We need to defeat him and his party. But if we focus exclusively on Obama
and the priorities he laid out tonight and ignore the fire within the
Republican Party, we are destined to play into his hands.
But the good news is that reinforcements are on the
way. Senator
Mike Lee showed us last night that there is still hope within the
Republican Party and it rests with competitive primaries. After a vanilla
pudding response to the State of the Union offered by GOP Conference Chair
Cathy McMorris Rodgers – one which was full of platitudes and devoid of policy
substance – Mike Lee laid out the superlative response from the Tea Party.
Mike Lee laid out our first principles in plain
language but also weaved them together into specific policy solutions. He
explained exactly how free markets and limited government help the very people
for whom Obama claims to protect. He argued our views from a position of
strength and went on offense against Obama’s class warfare instead of the banal
GOP response of “don’t hate us; we’re sweet people too.” Lee
unambiguously called for an end to corporate welfare. Not surprisingly,
he noted that “to be fair, President Obama and his party did not create all of
these problems. The Republican Establishment in Washington can be just as
out-of-touch as the Democratic Establishment.”
Lee went on to take Obama’s inequality meme and
throw it back at him like a cruise missile. He noted that inequality in
rural communities exists from government controlling most of the land out
west. He hit Obama directly on administrative fiat and NSA spying. He
went on to tie in government-sponsored inequality to government messing with
life and marriage (not running away from so-called social issues.)
Finally, he offered numerous policy solutions on infrastructure, education,
energy, and healthcare.
There are more Mike Lees where he came from, but we
will only find them in competitive primaries. It’s time to get to work
and rebuild the Republican Party, and by extension, this great Republic.
