With the Easter holiday now in the rearview mirror, we hope Americans took a much needed break from regular routine over the three-day observance to reflect on our country, the world and their own lives.
As is seemingly true with each succeeding year, the challenges to be faced during the upcoming warm season months are more serious and dire than ever. No doubt many Americans will think twice before turning down the thermostat this summer, fearing not only a possible Brown-out from lack of new power supply infrastructure but also the electric utility bills that will arrive in the weeks after a heat wave.
I doubt a reminder is necessary, but gasoline prices usually increase when temperatures rise, which will make those summer destination plans all the more difficult to determine. Airfares have already seen a sizable jump and aren’t likely to come down anytime soon. An American population that’s largely avoided -- by choice and otherwise -- taking a vacation the past couple years is sick of staying home and yearning to hit the road. Pain at the pump might prevent many from doing so.
Politically speaking, state party primary season is about to kick into high gear. In May alone, fourteen states will vote (here’s a list of all primary dates). State parties will determine at the local level (or in conventions) who will compete in this November’s federal midterm elections. More than just congressmen and senators, a number of states will select gubernatorial candidates and of course, nominees for lieutenant governor, attorney general and the increasingly important secretary of state office.
If the controversial and contested 2020 election taught us anything, it’s that state offices are as vital to assuring just and correct outcomes as the top of the ballot federal races. Conservatives should gear up now (actually, they should’ve started long ago) for a summer’s worth of down and dirty matches against the Republican establishment for ultimate control of the party.
Conservative icon Richard Viguerie states it often: “It’s the primaries, stupid!” He’s right.
With a bolstered contingent of Republicans going to Congress next year -- hopefully as a majority in both chambers -- the likelihood of stopping and reversing senile president Joe Biden’s disastrous policies elevates ten-fold. And liberty lovers will need plenty of boat rockers and new voices in the upper chamber, since GOP leader Mitch McConnell already sounds like he’s preparing to compromise with the leftists. In a piece titled, “Republicans Will ‘Make Biden a Moderate’ If They Retake Congress, McConnell Says”, Bill Pan reported at The Epoch Times:
“In an interview with Fox News, McConnell said the Biden administration ‘can’t seem to get their act together on economy,’ citing a series of issues such as inflation, rising energy costs, and the decision to once again extend the freeze on federal student loan payments. ‘This administration has really got its hands full and I think they’re headed toward a pretty good beating in the fall election,’ he told host Dana Perino.
“If Republicans regain control of the Senate and House this fall, McConnell said his party would make sure Biden governs from the center.
“’Let me put it this way—Biden ran as a moderate,’ McConnell said. ‘If I’m the majority leader in the Senate, and [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House, we’ll make sure Joe Biden is a moderate.’…’[O]ur agenda next year, if we’re fortunate to be in a majority, will be focused on … crime, education, beefing up the defense of our country.’”
I didn’t see the above-referenced TV interview, so I’m not sure if McConnell simply neglected to mention the biggest issues of all or if he was just acting as establishmentarians usually do by kowtowing to the country club Republicans and big business interests who love as much cheap labor illegal immigration as they can possibly get. As far as I can tell, conservatives are distraught over the horrible state of disrepair and desperation among the overrun U.S. Border Patrol agents. Wouldn’t this issue be priority number one, Mitch?
Don’t get me wrong, inflation, rising energy costs and an extended freeze on federal student loan payments are important matters, especially the former two problems. But immigration is what animates people, particularly the conservative grassroots activists who walk the precincts and man the phones at campaign call centers. They want to hear about what the GOP has going for stopping the invasion at our border, not what McConnell plans to do about Joe Biden’s ideology.
Frankly speaking, forcing Joe Biden to “govern as a moderate” will only provide the Democrats cover to try and recapture the presidency in the make-or-break 2024 election. If Biden -- or whomever the liberal party gets to replace the doddering old dolt -- is able to make a credible case that he’s seen the writing on the wall and begins compromising with RINO Mitt Romney and becomes chums and pals with the other GOP lightweights, the political system will not receive the swift kick to the keister that it desperately requires. Simply stated, we need liberty-protecting champions and budget busters, not weak-kneed “good government” types who would settle for a moldy half a loaf with the Democrats. If you need a visual, would America benefit from enacting a “climate change” bill that was only half as expensive as the original requested by Democrats?
Hardly. It’d be like dumping one gallon of overpriced gasoline onto the federal debt fire instead of two. The flames will still burn plenty hot and leave whatever was blazing in ruins.
Thankfully for us, Democrats would never go along with Mitch’s overtures of “moderation”. If last week’s Biden and Kamala gun-grabbing show at the White House was any indication, they’ll go just as far to the left in the next two years as they did in their first half-term. Senile Joe’s answer to the crime and murder spree raging out of control on American city streets was to call for more federal gun control and an assault weapons ban (magazine size limits as well).
Considering nearly all crimes are committed with illegal guns anyway, passing universal background checks and red flag laws won’t do one iota to help with street crime. But it sounds good to the low information voters to have senile Joe alternating between whispering into the microphone and screaming about his administration’s warmed-over proposals to restrict God-given Constitutional rights.
As the January 6 witch hunt and mistreatment of peaceful protesters demonstrated, the Biden Justice Department is more preoccupied with seeking out and punishing American citizens as “white supremacists” and “domestic terrorists” than it is in combating crime in American city trouble spots. If the feds won’t allow the police to do their jobs, the least they can do is stay out of the way of citizens arming themselves for their own protection.
Conservatives need more than basic reassurances from Republican leaders that they’ll “moderate” senile Joe’s administration. Numbers alone mean that the days of Democrats dreaming about cramming through the badly mislabeled “For the People Act” and Biden’s inane “Build Back (More) Better” programs are probably over. The GOP will shift focus to issues that conservatives care about instead of constantly trying to please leftist billionaires obsessed with “climate change.”
Further, Biden’s veto pen will guarantee that whatever the Congress manages to pass will be returned to Capitol Hill, likely to die an inglorious death upon failing to override the executive’s objections. Republicans must hold firm in budget negotiations and be ready and willing to force government shutdowns if the Democrats refuse to bend.
“Moderation” only means more years of record budget deficits and saddling future generations with unsustainable debt and a dysfunctional government that can’t be fixed. The time is now to announce priorities and stick to them. There’s nothing “moderate” or reasonable about the Democrats’ race-based platform, and the institutional rot in the federal bureaucracy mandates a rethinking of what it means to have a federal government.
McConnell and McCarthy are likely to be the Republican leaders in a new Congress, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Democrats don’t elect leaders who are determined to give away party priorities in order to look good to the media and to their opponents. Politics these days is more like blood sport than it is a collegial game of checkers. In the months ahead, conservatives must be prepared to receive the best the left has to throw at us. We need leaders in the mold of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene, men and women who not only can take a punch, they keep moving forward. Now is not the time to go soft or look to “moderate” the message.
Mitch McConnell likely meant well when he said his goal in the next Congress would be to turn Joe Biden into a “moderate”, but that’s not what America needs from the Republican party right now. Conservatives must have congressional leaders who do everything possible to expose the Democrats for exactly what they are: mean-spirited socialists who seek to transform the country by any means necessary.
Joe Biden economy
Democrat welfare bill
Build Back Better
13 House Republicans Infrastructure bill
Kyrsten Sinema
Joe Manchin
RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
Kevin McCarthy
Mitch McConnell
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