Friends, Enemies, and Party Discipline

The Obama administration, through its Eric Holder DoJ, has decided to prosecute Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ) on various charges of misbehavior, charges which the administration and the NLMSM have been bruiting about for roughly three years. Why bring the charges now? Because we’re in the end game of the Obama “negotiations” with Iran over the latter’s nuclear weapons program, and the deal being talked about will codify Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons. Menendez is a powerful Democrat, and he’s been a vocal critic of Obama and his Iran “negotiations.”

The attack on Menendez already has borne fruit: he’s stepped down from his position as Ranking Member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. This committee will have a strong input on pending legislation that will give Congress an oversight say on that pending deal with Iran (or force Obama’s veto of oversight of him and his actions); the prosecution and Menendez’ withdrawal from the committee dilute Democrats’ participation in that legislation.

On the other hand (just across the street, as it were), the Obama administration, through its Eric Holder DoJ, has declined to prosecute the administration’s IRS’ Lois Lerner on the contempt of Congress charges brought by Congress. Lerner is a friend of the administration; she’s the one who headed up the IRS’ attacks on conservative political organizations, “lost” emails regarding those attacks, and then refused to cooperate with Congress’ investigation.

I often say at this point, and I say now: this is the level of integrity of the Democratic Party; remember this in 2016.

Some might say, though, that there are honest Democrats in the party. For instance, isn’t Menendez, a target of Party persecution [sic] one such? Of course, there may well be. But where is their integrity when they associate themselves with a fundamentally dishonest organization? What does their silence on this sort of thing say about them?

Those honest Democrats in the Party can show themselves in one of two ways. One is to end their shameful silence, even in the face of the present Chicago-style Party discipline. The other, more powerful, way (especially since, honest or not, they’re badly tainted by their association with this Party) would be to leave the Democratic Party and form their own political party to compete against the Republicans and Democrats from a platform built explicitly on integrity.

Certainly, third parties generally don’t do well in American elections. The Republican Party began as a third party, and the Bull Moose Party was a third party with a powerful impact on our national elections. However, since then third party attempts since have failed (Nader’s and Perrot’s attempts, while famous, were ephemeral). The difference between those failures and the prior successes, though, is not an evolved political environment. The difference is that the lately third party attempts did not have established politicians as members or in their leadership, and aside from an ability to self-fund, they didn’t have the finances.

The honest members of the Democratic Party, however, both are well-known and established politicians, and they have effective and stable fund-raising capacity. A New Democracy Party, formed of these honest, now ex-, Democrats would be in an excellent position immediately to compete on the local and State level, and in just a few election cycles (see the Republican Party) to compete on the national level.

It’s not at all an insurmountable problem. If those honest Democrats are willing fight Party discipline and to show themselves.

Remember this, too, in 2016.

Projecting

The Texas House last Wednesday passed its version of the State’s spending budget. In the course of that, there was debate over Congressman Stuart Spitzer’s (R, Kaufman) amendment to reallocate $3 million from Texas’ HIV and STD prevention programs to its abstinence sex education programs. That amendment debate included this…foolishness:

Congressman Harold Dutton, Jr (D, Houston), asked Spitzer—a surgeon—whether abstinence had worked for him personally.

“It did,” Spitzer replied. “I’ve had sex with one woman in my life, and that’s my wife.”

Not content with his embarrassment (or simply unable to recognize it), Dutton pressed the matter.

Is that the first woman you asked?

Even at the State level, Democrats shamelessly assume their own shortcomings are held by everyone else, too. Psychologists call that (absent the qualifier) projecting. I add the qualifier because I don’t assume these highly educated and intelligent Democratic Party men and women really are that stupid or insensitive.

Integrity and All’s Fair

He bragged in a CNN interview about his slander of Mitt Romney, calling Romney a tax cheat while knowing he had no evidence to back that accusation.

Dana Bash: So, no regrets. About Mitt Romney, about the Koch brothers. Some people have even called it McCarthyite.

Harry Reid: Well, they call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win, did he?

The problem here is not Reid’s behavior or his pride in his slandering. We’ve known the depths of Reid’s fundamental dishonesty for years.

The problem is in his Democratic Party. No Democrat in the Senate, no Democrat in the House, no Democrat in the Democratic Party leadership, no member of the Democratic Party’s rank and file has spoken out against Reid’s behavior. All those Democrats—every single one of them—condone with their silence his dishonesty.

Remember this in 2016.

Seems Like Evidence Tampering

…to me.

Hillary Clinton wiped her email server “clean,” permanently deleting all emails from it, the leader of the House committee investigating the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi said Friday.

While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the secretary to return her public record to the Department[.]

Congressman Trey Gowdy (R, SC) also noted that Clinton is continuing to refuse to allow a third party to conduct an independent forensic inspection of the server, which looks to me like an effort to cover up the evidence of her evidence tampering.

Hmm….

The Democrats’…Budget

The House Democrats are showing their disdain for the American people with this thing (you have to drill to see what they’re burying).

Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D, MD) published the House Democrats’ version of a budget, and it nearly doubles the Federal deficit over the next 10 years and increases the national debt by nearly a third over the same period to $25 trillion dollars. On purpose. Remember this as he gears up for his run for the Senate next year.

While buying into every penny of President Barack Obama’s call for $1.8 trillion in more taxes (because Democrats can’t get enough of your money), it raises spending even more (because they need your money to buy votes to keep their power).

This isn’t a serious budget effort; it’s just an in-your-face answer to the more conservative budgets already on the table in the House and Senate. As they’ve done the last several years over multiple administrations, these Democrats are determined to block Republican initiatives, not because of any real, principled differences with them, but solely because of their Republican provenance.