Perhaps one of the most bizarre occurrences over this past week took place yesterday afternoon. While Ted Cruz was busy taking his show from the floor of the Senate, after 21 hours of marathon speechifying, to the Rush Limbaugh Show, the Democrat Response to his debate was delivered by John McCain (Rino), Arizona. John McCain did manage to stick with honesty for at least part of his response, in that he and his Senate colleagues did manage to put up an admirable fight for an entire year to keep this disaster from becoming law. I do remember that it should have been passed with greater ease, with the Democrats holding a super majority in the Senate, and a huge advantage in the House. So, yes the gang, including John McCain, did put up a valiant effort. We read on several occasions that the bill was dead, but as it turned out, that was only a ploy by Democrats to keep America from noticing what it was that they were up to. In the end, the Senate did manage to pass the legislation, and they did so using a piece of legislative underhandedness called budget reconciliation. That sentence will be important later on.
I also remember the anger of the American People being expressed via the 2010 Midterm Elections. Those elections were nothing short of a retraining order filed against the President and his team of cheats, crooks, and cronies. More importantly, it was also the voice of the American People saying loud and clear, we want the Obama Agenda stopped, and we want it stopped immediately. I also remember that a couple of weeks later, a lame duck session of Congress got together, with a Democrat super majority in the Senate and a huge Democrat majority still intact in the House, and passed some of the Obama wish list, all of which was blamed on the newly elected Republican majority, still unable to do anything to stop it.
I also remember that the House passed bill after bill repealing Obamacare, and notice that they were reelected also, showing that the American People seem to be on board with that idea. Keep that in mind as you watch McCain’s passionately delivered Democrat response to Ted Cruz’s speech.
John McCain’s plea for capitulation as the answer to the voice of the people is at best moronic. I could almost see that as being the case if Obamacare had been mentioned at any level beyond in passing by anyone on Team Romney during the campaign. The fact of the matter is that since Obamacare was 100% a rip off of Romneycare in Massachusetts, and since the same dumb ass establishment that sold us John McCain as the only one who could win in 2008 got us as a group to bite on Mitt Romney for the same exact reason, we mostly took this stink hole of a law off of the campaign table. The vote in 2012 was in no way a referendum on Obamacare, nor did any of the members of the Republican brain trust attempt to make it one. If it had been, the result would have been different. Something else McCain seems to have missed, is the fact that Barack Obama was not the only person to win an election in 2012. Ted Cruz also won an election. He was elected to be the Senator from Texas, and his constituents elected him precisely because he promised to do exactly what he is doing. The Republicans won the House of Representatives, and they won explicitly on the promise to do exactly what they are doing. That, and the simple fact that the only reason that the Republicans currently have as many as 45 Senators is precisely because each and every one of them promised to govern somewhere to the right of Barry Goldwater, someone from Senator McCain’s very state by the way. This should clue the canvas kissing doddering old fool into the realization that while Cruz’s method of continuing this fight might not have been the best tactical method available to the GOP, he and his fellow establishment leaders provided zero alternative. His choice was between doing what he’s done so far, or to simply accept the surrender that he and those who voted for him refuse to accept. Last but not least, for Ted Cruz this fight is not about how best should the party proceed in order to win and maintain power. For Ted Cruz, this fight is about doing what’s best for the American People, and quite frankly, that is something that I personally would like to see a lot more of, from our national leaders. At any point during John McCain’s Democrat response to Ted Cruz, did it ever cross his mind that sometimes, politicians should just do what is right and not worry so much about how it is going to affect their base of power?
Something else struck me about the response to Senator Cruz yesterday, and that was the arguments refuting his 21 hours of debate added up to nothing more than ad hominems, non sequiturs, and straw man attacks. On the replays shown by most media outlets, they carefully edited his comments to appear as though he spent 21 hours reading a Dr. Seuss book and comparing his fellow Senators to Neville Chamberlain. After hearing this, John McCain of course took his comparison out of context, and inserted the Nazi’s as a suitable substitute for the comparison that Cruz actually meant to make. The problem with faux outrage you see is that sometimes, what is actually said or meant will simply not produce the same level of anger that the combatant wishes others to feel. The simple fact is that Senator Cruz did not mention the Nazis, nor did he mention their atrocities, nor did he compare in any way what was happening in the Senate to the Holocaust. John McCain and Chuck Schumer did that, and they did so in a way that you were supposed to believe that Ted Cruz did it. Both of these men should be ashamed of themselves. They should, but then again, I believe that both of them are pathologically prohibited from such feelings.
Just another point to make, and that is this. In a world where many previous U.S. Senators have resorted to reading the Washington D.C. White Pages as a means of keeping the floor, Ted Cruz’s reading of Dr. Seuss is a welcomed respite. A 21 hour speech, which by the way, his had a far higher percentage of actual cogent argumentation than most previous such endeavors, is a difficult thing to piece together. Schumer’s complaint that Dr. Seuss himself would disagree, when that clearly had nothing to do with any of the reasons for opposing this rotten Law is low brow at best. I notice that none of the Democrats will say anything positive about this law that they’ve passed without reading. Not a single one of them is willing to enter into the debate, nor were they while it was passed.
Think about that for a moment. This Law was passed without having been read or debated. It took a year, during which time not one person explained it, defended it, debated its merits, or even estimated its impact. It was passed finally by using budget reconciliation, which by the way opens it up for debate as a budgetary item. So, while Barack Obama stands on his podium, behind the Teleprompter Of The United States of America, and proclaims that he will not allow the Republicans to use the budget as a bargaining chip to blackmail America with respect to this law, it was passed specifically as a budgetary concern, through the budget reconciliation process.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
