How Broken Is Washington?

So, just how broken is Washington? Let me count some ways:

1. We’re getting news reports that Republican leaders are suggesting to high-value donors that a resurgent Republican Party will not pursue repeal of Obamacare. That’s being roundly denied by official statements from key Republican leaders, like McConnell and Corker. But here’s the sign of how broken Washington has become: I can’t automatically believe the denials, or trust the Republicans to pursue repeal – even if they say they will. There’s been so much lying, on both sides of the aisle, that my trust is broken. Increasingly, I think that career politicians and federal bureaucrats make up one party regardless of the “D,” “R,” or “I” after their names, and we who want limited federal government, increased state power, greater liberty, and economic freedom make up a different party, regardless of the “D,” “R,” or “I” after our names. (Those who want to be taken care of by the government and are willing to trade personal and economic liberty to get it are not really a third party, so much as the willing dupes of the career politician party.)

2. Today, a Politico analyst on the Morning Joe show said the Republican leadership’s ideal scenario would be for a strong showing, but to fall short of a majority in the Senate because that would allow the Republican Party to mount a powerful opposition but would not put them in a position to actually stop the policies and laws that offend so many American citizens. As a consequence, the fervor would grow for a significant Republican blow-out in 2012. For the same reason, the Democrats would prefer a small Republican majority, large enough to be responsible for anything that doesn’t work until 2012, but too small to overturn a presidential veto. Their hope is that such a situation will lead to a restoration of Democrat power and a re-election of Obama in 2012. Clearly, this is a sign of Washington brokenness: both parties are exercising a cynicism that locks out the American public, and like the Democrats we are rejecting, the Republicans may well be more concerned with their own long-term power than with taking on the wrongheadedness of the current administration and the Democrat party. I cannot trust the Republicans to do the right thing. Even should they win the blow-out they seek for 2012, I have no automatic confidence that they will then act to reverse the damaging laws and policies enacted by the Obama regime. Instead, their power-oriented cynicism suggests they will do what consolidates their power rather than what is in the interests of the Constitution and the people they purportedly represent.

3. Even if the Republicans gain a majority in both Houses next month, the historic tendency of the Republican Party is to seek compromises with the Democrats. They want to be the party of “civility” that “goes along to get along.” The problem is that any compromise with Democrats requires increased regulation and decreased individual liberty, economic freedom, and localism. That’s because Democrats are always looking to increase the centralization of power; so when the Republicans compromise with them it means sacrificing some degree of Constitutional rights. How incredibly broken is it that I cannot trust that Republicans, given power, will act to reduce federal consolidation of power and restore the rights of individuals, local communities and states? This is why Republican representatives, especially of the conservative strand, are always at a disadvantage in the call for “bipartisanship,” and why Republicans have to be leaders, not functionaries: we need leaders who can articulate the problem of compromising with plans to increase federal authority and who can lead the nation toward those founding values that have made the U.S. unique among the nations of the world. I have no confidence that the current Republican leadership is made up of such people.

4. After November, the Republicans will have made a strong showing. Most likely they will have taken the House; the Senate is less certain, but it will be close.  The likely outcome of the closeness of the numbers of the two parties will be the empowerment of a handful of “moderates.” That means the Joe Liebermans, Lindsey Grahams and John McCains will be the de facto power base for the next two years – and we know what that means. McCain did not get my vote in 2008 (Palin did) because he is the poster child of what is broken in Washington. His willingness to compromise with Democrats, to “work across the aisle,” led to McCain-Feingold, among other disasters. He is not a free-market Republican, he is not a champion of individual liberty, and he does not favor strong borders (except when he must, to keep his office). But he and his ilk will effectively run the Congress for the next two years, slowly selling out the American people in the name of being bi-partisan.

5. In event of House and/or Senate gridlock, the President is in position to run the government, and continue his restructure of our country, by bureaucracy. The so-called czars on the White House payroll are empowered to by-pass much of the remaining checks-and-balances codified in our Constitution. In addition, they are ideologically prepared to act against existing law in the spirit of their moral self-righteousness. The brokenness of Washington is epitomized in the long-standing willingness of Congress and the Courts to allow the Administrative branch to slowly accumulate so much power in its own hands; in terms of the day-to-day running and decision-making at the federal level, the legislative branch is almost irrelevant. Unless new leadership, committed to the Constitution’s values, takes hold and forces the issues – regardless of the crises that such an exercise of backbone will cause – we will continue the drift toward one-chamber rule, with the President, whoever that might be, acting as a default autocrat. The Republican Party, both when it has held the presidency and when it has not, has been complicit in this slide toward an elevated presidency. That has to stop.

In sum: I do not trust McCain, McConnell, Snowe, Collins and Corker; I mistrust Boehner; and I don’t believe the Republican leadership really has my interests at heart. Or, put another way, the Republican leadership assigns to the political and economic convictions they share with me a lesser value than their “pragmatic” view of how political power is attained and maintained. They will undercut and sell, piecemeal, the Constitutional vision of what it means to be a whole and liberated person if doing so will secure them Washington power. And that is why I refused to contribute to the Republican National Committee when they called today. As I explained to the caller, I am giving – but I am giving to individual candidates based on my confidence that they are committed to Constitutional restoration. I am no longer interested in helping the “career politician” party, of which the Republican Party leaders appear to be about half.

This sad inability to trust the Republican Party to put principle above venal self-interest, even when it is the principled commitment to Constitutional values of the Tea Party movement that returns them to power, is the reason the Tea Party must continue beyond November 2^nd. It has always been a fact that only the principled commitment of average citizens to the Constitution’s vision has the power to sustain our nation along its founding lines; hence, we must hold every re-elected or newly-elected representative to the Tea Party values: limited government, individual liberty, and economic freedom. Failure to stop the decline of those values is the first strike against each representative and senator; failure to reverse the decline that has already occurred is the second strike.

If you know anything about changing the culture of a business or non-profit (my background is in church change), you know that it takes at least ten years to set a new direction. That’s why nation-building in Iraq, or any other nation, requires a long-term commitment. Not only does the opposition have to be soundly defeated, but then a new course has to be articulated, demonstrated, and cemented in the popular culture. That cannot be done in less than a decade.

That’s also why I don’t expect the restoration of Constitutional values and perspectives to take place in the U.S. in just the next two years. However, restoration cannot happen if we don’t have leaders who are personally committed to the change of direction. So I do expect that the people we Tea Party activists elect this year will be an active and persistent stumbling block to those who want to continue the current restructuring of America along European “progressive” lines. And I expect the Republican Party, beginning with its leadership and trickling down to the lowliest elected Republican representative, paid staffer, selected intern, and hired page to join the cause of reversing our decline from the lofty values of our Founders.  Anyone not up to the fight – and it will be a knock-down, dragged-out, long-term fight – needs to be replaced at the earliest opportunity so that, a generation from now, we will be able to say we have changed the course of the United States and restored individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government as the birthright of our grandchildren.

Anything less is a betrayal of our country, our flag, and our sacred honor as American patriots. It is time to become more committed to the Tea Party movement, not less; the battle has just begun. It will be an American Hundred Year’s War.

Are you ready?

I say: Let’s roll.

Tags: 2010 Elections, Politics