Elections are supposed to have consequences, but liberal “Republicans” in our nation’s capital are doing everything they can to make sure last fall’s history-making vote that put President Donald Trump in the White House is invalidated.
In the process, they are effectively disenfranchising the millions of Republicans, independents and Rust Belt Democrats who rebuked our nation’s failed status quo and voted for change last November.
The “America First” populism that coursed through our country during the last election cycle – defying both establishment parties, their leaders, their donors and their corporate media mouthpieces – should have ushered in an era of conservative collaboration unseen in Washington, DC, since the days of Ronald Reagan.
President Trump boldly proclaimed this new era from the steps of the U.S. Capitol moments after taking the oath of office as America’s forty-fifth president.
“We are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people,” Trump said.
Trump’s improbable ascendency – combined with GOP retention of the House and Senate – should have marked a clear line of demarcation, a triumphant and transformative paradigm shift in the evolution of our nation. After all, GOP House and Senate members had spent the previous six years vowing to reverse the harmful policies of former president Barack Obama.
Now they finally had their chance!
Unified GOP rule all but assured that Obamacare would be fully repealed, that long-overdue tax relief would be provided to the middle class, that a wall would be built along our southern border and that out-of-control federal spending would be slashed and streamlined.
Yet, none of these things have happened, though. Obamacare remains. Tax relief is stalled. And while federal spending continues to soar, the wall has yet to receive so much as a dime of the $12 billion to $15 billion down payment we were promised.
As a result, the people are getting restless, and wondering what happened to those GOP Members of Congress who promised so much, but have delivered virtually nothing.
The GOP Congressional failure lies at the feet of a handful of liberal “Republicans” who continue serving the Washington, DC, establishment’s interests.
At the heart of this ongoing betrayal is the so-called “Tuesday Group,” a caucus of fifty or so liberal GOP lawmakers which has its roots in obstructing the will of the people. Formed shortly after the 1994 “Republican Revolution” – in which voters recoiled at “Hillarycare” and other overreaches of the early Bill Clinton years – this organization was created to serve as a “counterbalance” to the new GOP congressional majority and its “Contract with America.”
“They formed a group to water-down and obstruct the legislation and policies promised in the contract, which is what they continue to do today,” author Jen Kuznicki wrote this spring for Conservative Review.
In 2007, the group formed its own political action committee, which now spends roughly $1 million each election cycle pumping special interest cash into the campaign accounts of its left-of-center members. All so they can turn around and sabotage the GOP agenda.
Leading the Tuesday Group is liberal “Republican” U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania – the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the current GOP “majority.” Dent has repeatedly voted against even a partial repeal of Obamacare. Not only that, he voted to continue subsidizing abortion provider Planned Parenthood with your tax dollars – and supported Nancy Pelosi’s amendment requiring the Pentagon to continue funding gender-transition surgeries. Additionally, Dent has voted against welfare reform and even used his power to kill a modest House Budget Committee proposal that attempted to make small cuts to so-called mandatory spending programs – all while backing tax hikes and cuts to military spending.
These are not the positions of a “Republican” leader, nor are they even the positions of a “centrist.” They are the positions of a liberal Democrat. Yet despite these votes, Dent has been allowed to retain his posts as chairman of the House Ethics committee and as one of the Cardinals of an influential Appropriations subcommittee.
Why is the GOP once again failing to lead? Because liberal Tuesday Group members continue to obstruct anything that might look like center-right governance in the hopes of restoring the comfortable big government status quo.
The first step to fixing a problem is naming it, and the Charlie Dent-led Tuesday Group thrives on gridlocking the conservative majority in the GOP, while making googly eyes at Nancy Pelosi across the aisle. If and, most likely, when Congress votes in September to raise the federal government’s debt-ceiling without any brakes put on government’s ever-growing power, and then votes to effectively continue funding former President Obama’s priorities in the spending bill, it will be the Tuesday Group that will bear responsibility. And it will be up to their constituents across the nation to hold them accountable.
Rick Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG).
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