Tag Archives: political parties

A Proposal

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The Republican Party has one of the smallest majorities in the House of Representatives in decades. They also have one of the most obstructionist, ego-driven factions in Party history, the Chaos Caucus whose members are pleased to call themselves the Freedom Caucus.

While Republicans will have full control of Congress and the White House, the wafer-thin cushion in the House means any small handful of Republican defectors could trip up the GOP agenda by holding out for their leaders or their own terms.

That small handful of defectors is the Chaos Caucus, and they spent all of the just ending Congressional session blowing up the Republican agenda, denying the party the passage of bills (even if doomed in the Progressive-Democrat-controlled Senate) that would have furthered Republican and Conservative goals.

That claque now is threatening the current House Speaker’s, Mike Johnson (R, LA), with removal from the Speakership at the outset of the next session. Congressman Thomas Massie (R, KY) is on record as refusing to support Johnson under any circumstances, and Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) is throwing her own terrible-twos tantrum. The claque is on track to continue, throughout that session, obstructing Republican and Conservative moves in favor of their own desires, an obstruction borne of their my way or nothing attitude.

Hence my proposal.

Regardless of what anyone might think of Johnson’s performance as Speaker, he should continue to run for the Speakership, he should refuse to step aside, and the majority of the Republican caucus should continue to vote him up, regardless of how long that leaves the House without a Speakership, regardless of how long the Chaos Caucus refuses to support him for the role. That should occur even when Chaos Caucus obstruction prevents the Congress as a whole from overseeing the Senate’s attempts to certify the Electoral College election of—still President-elect—Donald Trump, the Republican President-in-waiting, and thereby prevents that certification from occurring.

In addition to that, once Johnson is elected Speaker—if the House gets a Speaker at all this session in the face of Chaos Caucus obstruction—the Republican caucus (which in its aggregation unfortunately includes the Chaos Caucus) should attempt to enact spending cuts, tax rate reductions, and national defense recovery and buildup in the usual manner, and then put the bills to floor votes regardless of Chaos Caucus agreement or continued obstruction.

Put the Chaos Caucus’ deliberate intransigence on display for all to see, especially those Congressmen’s constituents. It’s time to make blatantly obvious just how destructive this ego-driven collection of politicians are of the Conservative agenda that Americans in all of our nation’s House districts elected all of our Representatives to enact.

The Chaos Caucus began as an evolution of the Tea Party movement and caucus, but the present claque as a whole no longer is a collection of Tea Partiers. Congressmen like Jim Jordan (OH), current House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Chairman of the Chaos Caucus, is one of the few who still is a Tea Partier and who is willing to compromise to move things along in the direction of Republican and Conservative—and Chaos—goals.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough, and coming back later to improve on the good enough takes us toward the perfect. The Chaos Caucus knows that as well as the rest of us; the claque’s refusal to compromise, their way or nothing blockages, only gets the Republican Party nothing at all, and puts the Progressive-Democratic Party in control.

It’s almost like the Chaos Caucus are Machiavellian-esque moles of the other party.

There would be a happy side effect of this: the government wouldn’t be increasing its spending while the Chaos Caucus is holding its collective breath until it turns blue.

Namby-Pamby

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It seems that Yemen is turning out hard to deter from its attacks on Israel. It shouldn’t be surprising that it seems so, given the Progressive-Democrat Biden administration’s lack of effort seriously to deter the Houthis in Yemen even from attacking commercial shipping in the nearby waters of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Despite hundreds of American and allied strikes and the deployment of a US Navy flotilla to the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on commercial shipping passing through the vital waterway and lobbing missiles at Israel.

Those hundreds of strikes have never been a serious attempt to deter the terrorists. They’ve just been reactive pin-pricks and tit-for-tat hits against the launch site(s) responsible for particular shots taken at shipping or, lately, at Israel. Virtue-signaling doesn’t deter much of anything.

It’s certainly true that terrorists who view martyrdom as a thing to be sought will be harder to deter than many other entities. However, were serious efforts made—were the Biden administration with or without the meekly passive participation of European governments—to destroy all of the terrorists’ launch sites, weapons and missile caches, the terrorists resident in them or nearby, in parallel with cutting off their resupply by sinking Iranian shipping carrying the resupply, deterrence qua deterrence would be irrelevant. The Houthis can’t shoot what they don’t have.

This, too:

The Houthis have withstood a nearly decadelong campaign by Saudi Arabia aimed at unseating them.

In this regard, the Houthis have been actively aided and abetted by the Progressive-Democrat Biden administration, beginning with their cutoff of arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the latter’s attacks on Houthi installations and Houthis themselves. The Biden claque masqueraded that cutoff as recompense for a Saudi’s murder of a journalist. That they’d be aiding terrorists hasn’t mattered to them. Virtue-signaling again.

More Progressive-Democrat Lies

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This time by Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secretary for the Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are too timid polite to characterize her claims as anything other than “she’s wrong,” but as one of those So Much Smarter Than Us, Granholm knew and knows better; she is lying to us. Here are the unhappy totals (sorry, Jack Brickhouse), prompted by a just-released DoE report on the effects of exporting liquified natural gas.

  • Granholm: exporting more LNG would boost US natural gas, electricity, and product prices.
  • Her Lie Exposed: US gas prices are hovering near record lows even as exports have surged. That’s because growing US production has more than offset domestic demand.
  • G: more US exports aren’t needed since the world will soon be awash in gas.
  • L: Europeans and Japanese disagree, and the DOE study stresses that “US LNG has played a role in enhancing supply security for markets looking to reduce coal in their energy mix while prioritizing both renewables and gas.”
  • G: US LNG would “displace more renewables than coal globally.”
  • L: The study finds that US LNG would mostly displace fossil fuels and at most increase global CO2 emissions cumulatively by 0.05% through 2050.

This is yet another reason why we wouldn’t have nice things under the reign of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Sulk on the Sidelines

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Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) has decided to take her marbles and go home in a snit. Not literally, she’ll remain, formally, a Republican, but

she won’t sit on committees or caucus with the House Republican Conference for the time being and will instead focus on working with the new “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency” caucus on cutting spending.

She says, in so many words,

I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing[.]
I do not need to be involved in circuses.

She’s not far wrong about the circus aspect, especially with the ego-driven Chaos Caucus continuing its knee-jerk obstructionism. Quitting the game, though, instead of staying in it, doing her best to reduce, if not eliminate, the circus aspect, is the move of a coward.

Pushing the DOGE spending cuts—whatever they are; so far, all we have is news outlet claims—all by her august self is a move borne of self-important arrogance. Demanding things be done her way or she’ll go sulk in her room is not the definition of leadership governing; it’s just more personal aggrandizement.

She doesn’t want to be just one voice in the cacophony. However, with her ducking out, she’s left the serious caucus with one less voice for functional governance.

Spartz is betraying her constituents.

She’s also contributing to Progressive-Democratic Party continued control of the House, given the Republican Party’s miniscule majority, and the Chaos Caucus’ preference for that over compromise with their fellow Republicans. That’s another betrayals of her constituents.

How Can He Trust Them?

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Former President and current President-elect Donald Trump (R) is being inundated with visits from CEOs who in the past have castigated him, his policies, his character, his integrity, even censoring him outrageously (excuse the redundancy). Some are even throwing millions of dollars at him his inaugural fund.

Titans of the business world are rushing to make inroads with the president-elect, gambling that personal relationships with the next occupant of the Oval Office will help their bottom lines and spare them from Trump’s wrath.
In the weeks since the election, Trump and his advisers have been flooded with calls from C-suite executives who are eager to get face time with the President-elect and his team at Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida club where the transition team conducts much of its planning for the second term.

Even as they smile in his face, though, they’ve already shown their true colors with their prior attacks. They’re only mouthing words of approbation today in hopes of avoiding the consequences of their disingenuosity.

How can Trump trust them? He can’t. He can use them, but he should keep in mind an old maxim: keep his friends close and his enemies closer.

At bottom,

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