Category Politics

Jan 24 2017

The Rise of the Republicrats

I recently listened to an interview with a gay activist who was recounting his shock and horror over the behavior of his leftist allies in recent events. He made an interesting observation that perhaps the recent “blurring of the lines” that we have seen this election cycle would have a positive effect because we would find out who we really are. Once I got past my negative reaction to the “blurring of the lines”, I think I understood and agreed with the premise he proposed.

While I may be misinterpreting his intent, for me this election has exposed what many citizens have been suspicious of for some time: Republicans and most “conservative” pundits don’t believe in anything. At the core of the Republican Party, the only consistency is the desire to change their stripes with every election cycle. While Republicans are gloating and reveling in this victory as vindication of their conversion from conviction to duplicity, the price of managing Good Trump/Bad Trump may find the GOP in the end far over-leveraged and bankrupt politically.

Yes, I am, with many true conservatives thus far, thrilled with the turn of events and to be, for the most part, proven wrong. I am a citizen of the United States and, therefore, Donald Trump is my President. But as I must maintain my mantle of my own Party’s harshest critic, Andy Torment, I do have some nagging questions.

Didn’t we just spend 8 years obliterating the Obama Administration for adding trillions to our national debt? I’ll help you. Yes, We did. Then how is it that our Republicans in Congress just voted in another 9.7 trillion in debt? Why all the silence now?

Oh, the media is silent as usual too. Why? They want it. We are all on the same team now. We are all Republicrats now. Isn’t wonderful? The Republicans finally brought some unity to Washington. We can all go down on this fiscal Titanic together. Strike up the band!

Now help me with this one. Didn’t we stamp, shout, and scream for 8 years against Obamacare? So why the silence on President Trump’s insistence that everyone must have healthcare and his plan is going to be even bigger and better, yes, “yuger”. So the reason Republicans are repealing the ACA is to put a bigger universal healthcare in its place? So if its Republican socialized medicine its OK? I see. Then no need to warn you about that iceberg….then? Right?

Here in Maine we have our own founding member of the Republicrats, Senator Roger Katz. He has introduced a Physician Assisted Suicide Bill into the legislature. Senator Katz is one of the many Republicans who are constantly trying to remove the traditional family from family values in the Republican Party platform. Yes, this is as much removed from common sense as the idea that social conservative values cause us to lose elections except for all the elections they help us win like this past one.

I know I’m putting myself out on a limb. I’ve been here before a few times; in fact, there’s a worn spot from my posterior out here. I’m fully willing to take my lumps and bruises if the limp snaps off with me on it, but if the Republican Party doesn’t find its conservative mooring and develop a spine now, they will never be able to manage the cyclical tumble-storm of Good Trump/Bad Trump that awaits them for the next four years. I can assure my fellow Republicans that a big smelly mush of Republicrats is not what the populace had in mind when it elected them this past November.

Jan 12 2017

So You’re Scared Now?

 

The recent rants of fear and even some hysteria coming from the left over the inevitable Trump presidency has many of my conservative colleagues gloating in the anticipation of at least four years of retaliation. I cannot embrace this new normal as the swings of the political pendulum are becoming dizzying at best. This is not what our Forefathers envisioned.

While I do not concur with Diane Feinstien that the whole world is living in fear at the looming shadow of a Donald Trump, I should remind said conservative colleagues that it was not but a few years ago that we were fearing and prognosticating the demise of this Republic at the hands of one Barack Obama. It didn’t happen. Though shaken and weakened, the Republic has survived. (At this point I’d like to ask those same said conservative colleagues if they could kindly reexamine the title “conservative” they have affixed to themselves and help me understand what their new version is because there is a whole lot of stuff now that is “OK” for “conservatives” to advocate for that was not “OK” for conservatives to advocate for before that flaming display of idiocy, otherwise known as the Republican Presidential Primary, occurred this past summer.)

So whatever tired, tortured, melded, manipulated, rehashed, regurgitated version of conservative you are, we need to remember that a large portion of the nation is feeling the same fears we felt for 8 years. Yes, even some of us conservatives, pre-primary conservatives, have very real concerns with this President. It’s true that thus far, with the exception of Rex Tillerson, I have been thankful for the sake of my nation to be proven wrong with Trump’s cabinet picks. But with the handful of pre-primary conservatives left who have concerns about Donald Trump’s ego and overreaches combined with the litany of liberals who are hand wringing distraught with visions of dire calamities with the second coming of Hitler, it’s safe to say that a large portion of the American populace are at best suspicious of the incoming administration.

So to my liberal friends I ask this question: Have we come to a common place of understanding? Do we understand now why the Constitution was intended to be a document of “negative liberties” as President Obama so famously accused? Can we see now why the Executive Branch should never wield unchecked power and ignore Congress as it has under both Presidents Obama and also Bush?

With our Republic’s system of checks and balances in place and obeyed, no people’s should need fear the election of a President. No persons should fear that the President will use the power of his office to target them based on their faith, ideology, ethnicity, or political persuasion. If a dressmaker refuses to design or sell the First Lady a dress or a baker refuses to bake a cake because it violates their personal beliefs, let them face the repercussions of their decision on the market where they compete, not underneath the whip of government.

Are we all now starting to see why our Founders believed so strongly in severely limiting the power and scope of government? Can we all now see the value of a government that fears the people rather than a people that fear their government? Can we all now see, both conservative and liberal, that looking for a one man solution, a king, is lazy dangerous solution?

It is time for the pendulum to stop its swing before we truly do the damage we fear to the Republic. Our Founders did not fear so much the ideology of those in the Presidency as much as they feared a President who would not honor the restraints of the Constitution. President Trump and the Republicans have this opportunity to restore the Constitutional system of Checks and Balances to this Republic, which it desperately needs. If these so-called conservatives do not work to stop the pendulum’s swing, then shame on them, for history will recall their names as the catalyst to the demise of this great Republic when the Nation called to them for peace and they heeded it not.

Dec 29 2016

Geographical Prejudice Part Two

 

It is called “The Great Compromise”. A fragile new Nation was on the brink of disaster. The states could not agree. The contention was so sharp between them that the Constitutional Convention was “on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a hair,” so recounted by Luther Martin, one of the delegates to the convention.

The schism developed over the proposed plan for government first presented by Virginia’s Governor Edmund Randolph, drafted by James Madison also of Virginia, which would select representation based on population. This would be called “The Virginia Plan.”

Quick to see this would greatly encumber the small states’ access to government and be weighted heavily in the favor of larger more populated states, New Jersey’s William Paterson countered with a “one state, one vote” concept. This plan, “The New Jersey Plan”, would protect the interests of small states, ensuring equal standing and representation at the table of governance. There was no small dissension between the factions and the convention was on the verge of implosion.

The salvation of the fledgling nation, teetering on demise, came in the form of an agreement which would create a bicameral Congress. The House of Representatives would be elected by popular vote and weighted by population, The Virginia Plan. The Senate would follow the concept of one state, one vote, The New Jersey Plan.

With the confidence that small states’ rights were protected, the Constitution of the United States was ratified. The idea that one geographical area could dominate the governance of a free people simply because of its population, the travesty of that idea of geographical prejudice was corrected and those fears allayed. Still, for all their fore site and amazing sense of fairness for all, the Founders neglected to see the need to remodel the states’ structure of governance to mirror the national template.

Perhaps despite all of their towering foreknowledge, the Founders could not envision a time when urban areas would be so large that the counties which held that cities boundaries could dominate the political landscape of a state in much the same way that Virginia could dominate the political influence in the days of the Thirteen Colonies. But that day exists and we see it here in our state of Maine. Yes, the division of the two Maines exists and the tension continues to grow.

The southern part of the state prefers “The Virginia Plan”, which is how our state and all 50 states are governed. Dominated by Cumberland County which encompasses Portland and all the surrounding suburbia, the South holds the majority of legislators in both chambers; in fact, Cumberland County alone holds a dominant majority of legislators in comparison to Maine’s other fifteen counties because of the majority of the population that resides in that geographical location. This flies in the face of everything our Nation was founded upon and specifically “The Great Compromise”.

Because of this inequity, the smaller rural counties of Maine are afforded no system of check and balance in the current form of governance that exists in our state. In recent political cycles, rural Maine has eked out some political victories by driving record breaking voter turnout, over 80% in some locals, and then waited in hopes of lower turnout in southern Maine to gain slim victory. The political climates of each of the Maines are polar opposites, yet southern Maine, due to “The Virginia Plan”, is able to often legislate the governance of northern Maine, despite their protestations.

In an effort to remedy this wrong in much the same way our Founders did, both Senator Paul Davis and Representative Heather Sirocki have proposed at different times separate legislation which would have amended the state Constitution to in essence apply “The New Jersey Plan” and give every county two Senators mirroring the United States Constitution. Predictably, southern interests defeated those bills. Simply put, big government has a vested interest in keeping equitable representation out of governance.

Often when the subject of this legislation is discussed with politicians they will respond that is too difficult or too complicated, which is code for too lazy or too cowardly. Many legislators have forgotten the basic tenet of a Republic that is for the people by the people in that all people regardless of where they live should have equal standing with our government. I would strongly encourage Senator Davis and Representative Sirocki to reintroduce their legislation. This was the spirit our Founders understood in “The Great Compromise” and must be the goal of our legislators if they truly believe in fair, equitable, and unprejudiced representation of the people.

Dec 3 2016

Bad For Thee, Good For Me

 

I have made the public statement that I daily hope and pray that President-Elect Donald Trump will continue to prove me wrong. To this point, the overarching consensus from the TMCV (The Maine Conservative Voice) is that the future President has done the just that. I use the word “overarching” so the reader can assume the caveats implied.

For example, General Mattis is a fantastic pick for defense. He brings back the sense of a disciplined, tempered, steely, ferocity in our military that Americans are desperately needing to see in the forces that protect this Nation in the face of the unspeakable horrors that surround us. In contrast, if not just slightly, I think the jury is out on Betsy DeVos, for education. Much depends, sadly, on whether she was lying when she said she opposed common core or lying when she supported it.

This brings me to my final thought for today. A critique of not only of the President-Elect, but of Conservatives also. Let’s just call it, if I may fall back on some lingo from my birth state of Arizona, a burr or a bullhead in my saddle.

Under the file of “Bad for Thee,But not for Me”, the Carrier deal is crony capitalism plain and simple. You can’t slap Republican on something and somehow think it makes it right. That’s called hypocrisy….plain and simple. We railed against liberals for this. But now we celebrate it because it’s “our side” screwing with Free Market? It was wrong for Solyndra, it was wrong for GM, and it’s wrong for Carrier.

Again the pendulum swings and we are not trying to stop it. This is the burr in my saddle. We have always as Conservatives preached against the “end justifies the means” approach of liberals, yet much to my chagrin (I speak for myself), it seems many Conservatives had no problem employing said approach this election cycle.

The response I consistently hear as of late is “Hey, we won!” While I feel increasingly in the minority among those who profess to be my conservative allies, I still contend that, for me, social and fiscal conservatism is not a campaign tactic, but rather, a reflection of my core convictions. Perhaps I am a relic of the past that deserves to be kicked to the curb as some assert, but a quick perusal of history will confirm that the “end justifies the means” ascent to power only assures a destructive exposition in the end, of this I am certain.

I understand give and take. I understand compromise is essential to effective statesmanship. I probably break with many fellow conservatives when I say I think Mitt Romney would make an excellent Secretary of State. His calm, measured demeanor is sorely needed on the world stage. Yes, I am fully aware that he certainly lacks in his conservatism.

I differ with many of my learned and far more talented contemporaries, such as Matt Gagnon, when I say Sarah Palin would be a great pick for the VA. I think we have forgotten what propelled her to the Governorship. Remember, her dogged investigation of the corruption in the oil companies in Alaska?

This I say simply to point out that I understand the give and take among the conservative ranks. What I cannot fathom however is how some so easily abandon their professed convictions for “Hey,we won!” Yes, I am aware one former Governor of Alaska certainly was the first to seemingly toss conviction to the wind for “the win”.

So there is contention within the conservative ranks that must be resolved. Can a candidate be a person of conviction and be successful? Or must the candidate simply profess conviction as tactics to be removed and reinstated as political atmospheres dictate? Is there really a right or wrong? Or does it have to be the present cycle of “bad for thee but not for me”? I foresee some soul-searching in my horizon. Is soul-searching allowed in politics?