You’ve got to hand it to the Republican Party. What political party could manage to blow a huge electoral mandate and totally alienate its base, all within 30 days?
During the run up to the Nov. 4 midterm elections, Republicans from Reince Priebus to John Boehner swore up and down they were going to fight Barack Obama if he pushed through with amnesty policies. Mr. Obama followed through.
Republicans were allegedly outraged. Mr. Boehner, the House Speaker, put down his drink and his cigarette long enough to vow this would not stand.
The American people sent a pretty resounding message to Washington in November. Poll after poll shows that Americans are not happy with the direction the nation is heading and want change. Polls show that 80 percent of Republicans oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Fifty-one percent of independents also oppose amnesty.
But that did not stop Mr. Boehner from having another drink or hoisting his freshly laundered white flag of surrender. There will be no government shutdown he promised.
Mr. Obama promptly laid his marker down. Either the Republicans agree to fully fund his amnesty or he would veto any budget bill passed and shut the government down.
Mr. Boehner immediately assumed the Republican position of pre-emptive surrender. He is now working overtime to not only fund Mr. Obama’s amnesty policies but to ensure that Congress itself passes an amnesty bill in 2015. A sane politician typically pays attention to the voters who put him or her into power. Mr. Boehner simply proves the Republican Washington Establishment has as much contempt for the conservative base as the Democrats do.
Instead of passing a short-term budget bill and letting the Republican majority make the decisions in 2015, Mr. Boehner and company want to pass a long-term spending bill. They are going to let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the defeated Democrats dictate budget priorities for one more year.
In one of the more insane moves of the We Suck Less Party, Republicans are rewarding liberal groups that tried to defeat them in the elections. Liberal groups spent hundreds of millions to defeat Republicans and ensure that wasteful green energy subsidies like the Wind Power Production Tax Credit.
Conservatives wanted that abolished because it was a wasteful subsidy for billionaires.
The Republicans could have acted on principle and abolished this instance of wasteful spending. They could have acted on cold political calculus and punished those who opposed them.
The party of We Suck Less did neither, and sent a great message to the left: Support the Democrats all you want and even if you lose, you are still going to get what you want.
Conservatives wanted the Republican leadership to fight. After all, they had promised they would fight Mr. Obama.
What did conservatives get? Conservatives got total and complete surrender by the Washington Republican Leadership. Mr. Boehner even borrowed a page from Nancy Pelosi. The House spending bill, the so-called “cromnibus” measure, is not even being shown to representatives until this week. They will have at best a day to look at it before the vote. It will literally be a case of they will have to pass the bill to find out what is in the bill.
America sent Washington a message in November. The Republicans in Washington ignored the message and now are about to lose their base.
During the campaign, the theme of the election for the Republicans was “We suck less than they do.”
John Boehner and the Washington Republican Leadership proved they don’t suck less.
They simply suck, too.
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