”Trick me once, shame on you; trick me twice, shame on me!”
Will TEA Party-Inspired Victory
Again Go to Waste for Conservatives?
The man of the hour is House Speaker Designate John Boehner. On the face of it, it appears that the hopes of conservative America could hardly have been put in stronger hands. Mr. Boehner reportedly has never asked for nor taken an earmark in his twenty-year career. Yes, a man of principle is needed. But more than anything else, America needs John Boehner to be a man with an elephant’s fabled memory and an owl’s much lauded wisdom. Will the recent TEA Party-inspired victory at the polls go to waste for conservatives? Something even bigger along those lines happened in 1994 . . . it must NOT happen in 2010.
In 1994 the conservative standard-bearers, the Republican Party swept into control of both the House and the Senate netting 55 new house seats on the way. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Republicans had set the victory up by creating a “Contract for America” similar in many ways to the ideas propelling the TEA Party Contract from America and the Republicans Pledge to America, both offered up in 2010. This year things are different in three important respects from 1994:
1) From a conservative’s view point, the 2010 election result was broader but less conclusive. Many more governorships were seized; more U.S. House seats were gained; many more individual state House and Senate seats were won; but the gain of six U.S. Senate seats did not give the Republicans a majority in that chamber.
2) The clear inspiration for the Republican victory was the creation of the TEA Party grass roots fiscal- and Constitutional-conservative movement begun about February, 2009, shortly after Barack Obama, the Democrats and many Republicans passed the $787 Billion Obama stimulus.
3) Republicans running on religious-conservative or socially-conservative lines were uniformly defeated as the old “litmus- test” gave way to a type of conservativism that Independents embraced eagerly.
TEA Party Has Much to Learn;
Republicans, Even More, from 1994
So, what exactly does the TEA Party-inspired conservative victory mean for America?
A. Nothing, if the beneficiary of this Conservative victory (the Republican Party) ends up less than a party of principle and also opts to return to its old “litmus test” of social and religious issues
B. Everything, if the beneficiary of this victory ends up returning to its roots as the party of small government; accountable government; fiscal-conservativism; and Constitutional Conservativism, leaves the old litmus test behind and learns from the debacle of 1994 . . . .
In 1994, the Republican Party had a historic opportunity dropped into its lap and then blew it badly by playing small politics instead of honoring the will of the voters and standing up for Constitutional- and fiscal-conservativism. Back then the voters angered by the Democrats’ failed attempt at Hillarycare and other less than conservative efforts by Bill Clinton also rejected the Democratic Party at the ballot box. The G.O.P. picked up 55 seats in the House of Representatives for a majority there and even won the senate. Like now the Republicans back then had a document working for them, the “Contract for America.” John Boehner has the opportunity to learn from Newt Gingrich’s less than sterling efforts and begin the nation’s return to sanity, principle and fiscal-integrity. You see, Gingrich compromised repeatedly with that wily devil Bill Clinton. Boehner would do well to learn the lesson that only 100% principled bills need to be presented for a vote in the House, not 99% principled bills with one ear mark or one outrider; not 99.9% principled bills . . . but only 100% principled bills. Why?
ITEM: You will remember that it was only AFTER the Republican victory in 1994 that Bill Clinton was able to go from 36% approval to 65% approval (in January, 1998, just prior to his escapades with Monica Lewinsky in the so-called “tailgate” or “little blue-dress scandal” becoming the headline story for the next few months).
ITEM: You will remember that it was only AFTER the Republican victory in 1994 that Bill Clinton was able to pass three expansions of the Community Reinvestment Act (two in 1995 and the “steroid version” in 1998) which ACORN was able to exploit to turn Jimmy Carter’s ill-conceived CRA of 1977 into a nation-wrecking sub-prime lending crisis**.
Item: You will remember that whereas in 1976 only one in 404 mortgages was offered at less than 3% down payment; that by 1986 the Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now (later to expand to become the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) had doubled the rate in the nation to one questionable loan in every 198 mortgages; which had really jumped to one bad loan in every 14 by 1996; and 34 questionable loans in 100 by 2006 and ignited our present financial crisis.
Item: You will remember that ACORN lawyer Barack Obama in Chicago played a key role in that area brow-beating and shaking down lenders to force them to comply with the evil CRA legislation.
Item: You will remember that after 1998’s steroid expansion of the CRA ’77, ACORN, without Barack Obama, discovered that it was now just as easy to put an ultra poor renter into a $450,000 home as it earlier had been to get him into a $150,000 one.
Item: You will remember that after 1998’s steroid expansion of CRA ’77 by Clinton, ACORN was able to get many loans not at 3% but at ZERO% down payments.
Item: You will remember that people without I.D.; people without jobs; people without anywhere close to decent credit ratings; people without even a rental history; people whose only “income” listed was food stamps; other welfare recipients; and even illegal aliens were being put into $350,000-$500,000 homes courtesy of ACORN’s “street warfare” against mortgage lenders required by law to make knowingly bad home loans.
Item: You will remember liberal news coverage in big cities of protests against banks “Unfair to the poor” or “racist banks” being carried on TV as crowds chanted on the lawn outside bank presidents’ and vice presidents’ homes.
Item: You will remember G.W. Bush trying to change this complex of laws in January, 2005, but progressives from both parties (particularly the Democrats) voting him down.
Item: You will remember G.W. Bush personally or via spokesmen talking to congress some 26 times about the financial problem these CRA laws were causing.
Item: You will remember finally 30 months after his first attempt to rein in this nightmare runaway train, the Bush administration and bi-partisan patriots passed a watered-down version of his original anti-CRA bill in July, 2007. It was, of course, way too little, way too late and the debacle was on us by October, 2007.
Item: You will remember that three months ago in August, 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised Bush’s actions for stopping the recession from becoming truly deep and serious and from preventing a critical plummeting in home prices.
Item: You will surely remember that on at least 200 occasions, Barack Obama^^ has told us an analogy about a car in a ditch driven there by the previous administration.
Item: You will surely remember that Barack Obama claims his policies prevented another “Great Depression” caused by the prior Republican administrations and failures of the Free Market.
Item: You will surely remember Barney Frank saying, “Gee, the Free Market created another mess and now government has to come to the rescue . . . AGAIN!”
Item: You may not remember Rajjpuut telling you that the correct version of the “car in the ditch” story was that George W. Bush saw Obama, Clinton, ACORN and progressive politicians deliberately pushing the car (the economy) toward a 500-foot cliff (utter financial disaster) and jumped into the front seat, grabbed the wheel and slammed on the brakes, thus initiating a controlled skid that deposited the vehicle into the nearest friendly-looking ditch.
Item: You will surely remember Tuesday’s voting and that courtesy of the awareness created by the TEA Party, the Republicans now have a chance to make amends for their faulty oversight of the nation between 1994 and 2004.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
**How exactly did this disaster happen with Republicans owning a majority in both chambers?
How did Clinton like a Tae Kwan Do black belt use the power of the powerful House Republicans against them? It happened, just as the strike out of MIGHTY CASEY did, because “pride goeth before the fall.” Because when “politics is the art of the possible,” all is well; and when politics becomes "the art of the compromise for appearance-sake," all is surely wrong.
The Republicans, you see were committed by Gingrich to passing legislation in the House in accord with their Contract with America. Since they had the majority, they could and did and included among their achievements was incredible Welfare Reform, all well and good. However, Gingrich went beyond the possible into the dirty world of compromise with the Devil (Clinton) and got smacked around like a schoolboy. It happened more or less because Gingrich’s pride could NOT accept passing a bill or several versions of a bill only to see Clinton veto it repeatedly after the senate sent it to him. His pride demanded that he ENACT legislation . . . something NOT in his power. Enter the fuzzy world of COMPROMISE . . . .
Gingrich’s pride would NOT allow him to pass a bill and call it a success, he must see it enacted . . . and there Clinton had him because Clinton was NOT facing a veto-proof congress. So the Republicans would set out and eventually pass a great piece of legislation, Constitutional and smart and Clinton would veto it. They would adjust a few things tinker with it here and there and get a few more Democratic votes and pass it again and again Clinton would veto it. Presumably if Gingrich had been content to keep passing good bills and been content with the few crumbs of success Clinton allowed to become law, much good would have done; the Contract with America would have been achieved (passing all the bills; not unfortunately enacting all of them); and Clinton’s approval rating would have dropped into the teens . . . instead because of his pride and compromising with Clinton . . . the Dems got credit for passing “monumental reform” legislation; and the Dems repeatedly snuck in little pieces of poison (like three CRA ’77 expansions) and so Clinton was resurrected and re-elected. “But, but, but HOW?” You ask.
After several vetoes of several versions of a particular bill, finally, the minority Democrats in the House would create virtually a twin of the most popular version of the same bill Clinton had just vetoed (with some teensy-teeny nasty progressive surprises such as the CRA ’77 expansions earlier mentioned in them dropped into the small print) . . . rather than standing upon principle and defeating the bill in the house, Gingrich and the Republicans went along with Clinton’s charade, time after time after time after time and helped Clinton go from 36% approval to about 65% approval by 1998 before Monica Lewinsky did him in. Yes, the G.O.P. did fulfill their Contract with America, but because of the wily Clinton the nation was much the worse for it . . . . And that is the lesson John Boehner must take from history as goes about meeting the Pledge to America. NO compromise with the Devil, please, Mr. Speaker!
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/pledgetoamerica.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America
^^ This is an example of the two most well-known propaganda techniques: the Big Lie in conjunction with Unceasing Repetition.
