Rush Limbaugh’s Harsh Words for the GOP!

 

The following lenghty quote by Rush Limbaugh was published in the Huff Post today:

“I was trying to think if ever in my life, I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant. I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican party has been doing. There has not been any serious opposition…against what’s happening in this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them and what they’ve ended up doing is creating one of the greatest political disasters I’ve ever seen in my lifetime…I was pondering if I could ever remember…a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist, for all intents and purposes.”

Rush is not only a master of hyperbole, he apparently has also developed a mastery at ignoring any facts that get in the way of his opinions.

The GOP tried every available tactic to get their way; to get Obamacare defunded or, at least delayed.  They tried to hold the hard line, they tried (over 40 times) to compromise, they spent weeks trying to raise the publics ire against Obamacare and, yes Rush is right, “they have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them;” apparently, according to the self designated Grand Poobah of Conservatism, getting the public to like them was a bad strategy.

Actually, opposing Obamacare at that point, at that time, against the obvious odds was a WORSE strategy!

The problem was not that the GOP leaders did not try, the problem was they DID try; they tried to negotiate with a ‘brick wall.’ They were just plain outvoted from the beginning. President Obama has a lock on the Democratic vote and, this being his “signature legislation, there was NO WAY he was going to allow it to fail or allow his minions to falter. How could they NOT have realized that?

President Obama HAS the “bully pulpit” and he knows how to use it. He is devious and he cares about NOTHING more than he cares about Obamacare; the people who were affected by the government shutdown: (he may blame the Republicans for the shutdown but it was HIS shutdown not theirs); the government employees who, as far as he was concerned could starve and loose their homes, caused him no loss of sleep; the aging veterans who wanted nothing more than to walk up to a wall and read the names of fallen friends could have, as far as he was concerned, laid down and died outside of his barracades.

The GOP did not even have an overwealming majority of public sentement on their side, in the polling where their case won, the win was no more than marginal.

One other problem the GOP had is hardliners on the Right. They thought that they could march in and overturn a piece of existing legislation when they don’t own the Senate or the Whitehouse or the main stream media or even an overwealming majority of citizen opinions. If this were a war, that strategy would have left them all dead.

Even though the GOP was absolutely right that, in the end, Obamacare will be a disaster for the country on many different levels the Tea Partiers and the other right-wing ideologues never confronted the fact that that they had picked the wrong fight on the wrong battlefield against the wrong opponents. Their strident battle against Obamacare weakened their more important battle that should have been solely focused on government spending and the size of government.

I’m not a politician but it makes sense to me that they should have gone, at some point, to the President and said ‘OK, we aren’t going to oppose you on Obamacare if . . .’ and then they should have presented some budgetary options that would at least have stood a chance.

It’s a life lesson that everyone knows but many are too bullheaded to believe: Being right is not important when you are outnumbered and outflanked. Pick another day to be right!

Forget Obamacare for now, get a budget deal passed and get on with American life.

“Back in the day” (as we baby boomers lament) there were Republicans and Democrats and a few Independents. Today we still have Democrats and Independents but the Republican Party finds itself fragmented (and hampered) by idealists, aka: Conservatives and “tea partyers” who have a wonderful understanding of our rights under the Constitution but who apparently do not understand the American political system.

Not that these idealists are wrong about what they are fighting for, e.g., Obamacare really IS destructive, both financially and Constitutionally to America; it takes basic freedoms and choices away from American citizens and it forcibly transfers the cost and responsibility for the health-care of the poor, uneducated and unemployed from the central government (where it belongs) to those who can provide for their own health care with or without insurance as they choose. This is President Obama living up to his pre-election promise to “level the playing field”.

Where, in my opinion, the Conservatives and tea partyers are wrong is that they feel so sure that they are right they operate as if EVERYONE else is wrong as well as inconsequential. As much as the they would like their idealism and dedication to the Constitution to be automatically shared by every other politician and every citizen, these ideals are not universal.

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“The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.”
Sydney J Harris
American journalist
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To be an effective legislator or political leader you must occasionally compromise your personal ideals for the sake of America and Americans. Right now the idealists want the un-American monstrosity known as the Affordable Care act defunded, killed and neutered without regard to the fact that this Act is an existing law that has been declared Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The fact that the Supreme Court paid no attention to the Constitution when it made that decision really makes no difference at this point. The monstrosity was declared Constitutional and until or unless that decision is successfully overturned, it is the law of the land.

Obamacare CAN be defunded but the idealists can’t get it through their thick skulls that it will NEVER happen while the Senate and the Executive branch are controlled by Democrats. Like deranged goats, they seem to enjoy butting their heads against the wall completely unaware of the facts that make that action futile.

Shutdown!!

The finger of blame for today’s government shutdown points squarely at President Obama and his Democratic robots in Congress.

That is of course not what most of the media will tell you and that is certainly not what you’ll hear from Obama’s talking heads but it is a fact. If the Republican lawmakers have a share of the blame it is only because they tried to do their jobs, i.e., be responsive to their constituents and do what they see as best for the country; and also because they were stupid enough to think that our incompetent, misguided president might consider the layoffs of thousands of government employees (many of whom live from paycheck to paycheck) to be more important than delaying the implementation of Obamacare.

The Republicans in the House voted to fund continuing government operations it is our Ventriloquist and Chief President Obama (with his hand up the back of his ‘dummy’ Harry Reid) that shut down the government so he could continue his assault on free enterprise through his manipulation of health insurance.

I’m not sure what hold President Obama has on the Democratic members of Congress but it must be something very powerful, almost hypnotic, to cause them to ignore the facts that imposing government health care on those who do not want it or need it is immoral and, in spite of the Supreme Court’s June 28, 2012 unconstitutional and totally political decision to rewrite the law rather than call it what it is, it IS clearly unconstitutional.

If Obamacare was just one option out of many for those Americans without health care, very few people would have a problem with it; but as it is now the Federal government, under the control of the most misguided and UnAmerican president in it’s history in charge of everyone’s(*) health insurance.

* Reference:

The Inquisitr: <a href=”http://www.inquisitr.com/974395/obamacare-exemptions-to-affordable-care-act-fines-exist-but-only-for-certain-people/”&gt; Obamacare Exemptions To Affordable Care Act Fines Exist, But Only For Certain People</a>