The Republican Party Still Sucks

The Republican Party has been weak and anemic for decades.

by Shawn Waugh for American Greatness

In May 2021 my good friend, Tal Bachman, wrote a blistering column for American Greatness slamming the Republican Party.

The piece was well received within conservative circles. It landed Tal in the “War Room” with the Democrat nemesis and former Donald Trump Chief of Staff, Steve Bannon.

The reprimand was well deserved. The GOP had earned the tongue lashing. The Republican Party has been weak and anemic for decades. Tal rightly surmised that the party commenced sucking with the presidency of George H. W. Bush and continued sucking even through the Donald Trump presidency from 2016-2020. It sucks even more today.

It is no secret that Trump was (and still is) an outsider to the GOP Washington, D.C. elites. Long term members of the Uniparty Swamp couldn’t persuade Trump into deep state membership. They couldn’t lure him over to bow down to the lobbyists and globalist elites.

The bottom line is that the Republican Party couldn’t buy Donald Trump.

So they just kept sucking. Ultimately, they became a major factor in preparing the White House halls to be roamed by a former basement-dwelling mannequin. We have them to thank for the decrepit old man shuffling around in socks that are attached to his slippers, shaking hands with air, calling on deceased members of Congress, and aimlessly wandering around on the world stage.

One would think that it would be easy not to suck given the mishaps of the current disastrous administration. But the Republican Party can’t seem to help itself. It just keeps sucking.

I offer up three simple examples of the ways the Republican Party still sucks: complacency, poor leadership, and messaging.

Problem No. 1: Complacency

Comfort and complacency have been major problems for the Republican Party. They fall into a Rip Van Winkle sleeping stupor regardless of which party holds the White House.

The GOP plays the political casino game. They know that the midterm elections almost always favor the out of power party. It is simply an ironclad rule that everyone learns in POLI-SCI 101. Today this is a simple do-nothing strategy because a political Democratic swamp creature occupies the Oval Office.

A November Red Wave is coming and the current Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will simply lay his chips on the pass line and let it ride.

This is too easy for McConnell, whom former President Donald Trump rightly labeled a do-nothing “broken-down crow.” You’re not likely to catch McConnell at Mar-a-Lago chatting it up and having beers (or Diet Cokes) with the former president.

Conversely in 2018, when the White House was held by Trump (a Republican), McConnell, then Senate Majority Leader, placed a much smaller bet on the same pass line during those midterm elections.

A November Blue Wave came, as predicted.

Regardless of whether the GOP holds the White House during a midterm election, their approach is predictably feeble. Every single time.

No fight, strategy, or plan. Nothing.

Problem No. 2: Poor Leadership

Sutured closely together with complacency, poor leadership is a significant reason why the Republican Party sucks.

Other than a few shining stars in the party, the run-of-the-mill GOP lifers act more like Al Bundy than Andy Griffith.

Over the last several decades, the so-called Conservative party has had very few real fighters with superb counter-punching ability. Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and more recently Donald Trump come to mind. I can’t leave out the current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. He may throw the best return hook of any current Republican leader. But he’s not in Washington, D.C. . . . yet.

McConnell is the current Senate Minority Leader. He has a 34 percent approval rating. And that’s just among those from his own party. He actually polls better with Independents at 35 percent. Jock itch currently polls better than McConnell.

Why is McConnell so bad?

It is well known within the party that he will double cross his fellow members in back room parlor deals with Democrats. He does not speak with convincing authority. In fact, listening to McConnell read his scripts on the Senate floor is like watching the town drunk vomit on himself over and over again. He’s no better with interviews in front of the camera.

The bottom line is that McConnell frequently abandons conservative legislation to please his pals on the other side of the swamp. He is weak and often taps out before the bell rings.

Problem No. 3: Messaging

Messaging from the Republican Party has always been an issue. The most prolific message they have is to be antagonistic to whatever the Democrats put forth.

It is all too common for Republican lawmakers to skirt around questions when pressed on policy. For instance, the current ginormous political elephant in the room is inflation. So what’s the plan to decrease inflation? The typical cookie cutter GOP response is to “cut taxes.”

Sorry, but “cutting taxes” isn’t going to do it.

Aside from Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), no other Republican lawmaker has put forth any real tangible plan to tackle inflation. Many, including McConnell, have rejected Scott’s plan outright because there are tax increases built into that attempt to make up the difference. I’ll give kudos to Scott for at least putting something forward other than a useless talking point. It may not be the best plan, but at least it is a plan.

House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), recently unveiled a four-part “Commitment to America.” It’s essentially the intentions of the House if control flips back to the GOP as predicted.

This is certainly better than what the GOP has done in the past. But honestly, it is still just talking points with few real specifics as to how they plan to achieve their goals.

McCarthy is a smooth talker with a political gift of gab. However, he gives the impression that he lacks the skills of policy wonk or political mastermind to deliver much outside of preformatted talking points. As we say in Kentucky, “He’s dumber than a bag of hammers.”

Not only do they lack messaging on policy, they reveal almost zero zeal to stand up against the Left’s fantasyland of transgenderism and their manufactured climate boogeyman.

What To Do?

We need revitalization within the Republican Party. It’s easy to say and almost impossible to do. The intensity and gusto of Trump failed to bring it. The deep state and lobbyists in D.C. have become a metastatic cancer that no drug or person can cure.

And even if a way to revamp the party suddenly appeared, we know the moment it became popular would be the same time it would die a rather expeditious death. We watched it happen with MAGA. Murdered by the very ones it could forever cure!

Why would they do this?

Because the Republican Party still sucks!

X22 and And We Know- Oct 8

 

Enjoy tonight's rally in Nevada! And here's my piece from earlier today in case you missed it: https://wwwp-lives.blogspot.com/2022/10/hetty-deserves-better-and.html

Here's tonight's news:

It Takes Their Collective to Kidnap Your Child

Parental rights provide the line in the sand over which, should the Left successfully cross, you will no longer be a parent or a sovereign citizen of a free republic.

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

In what history will record as one of the most egregious perversions, the Left projects its own sins onto its victims to transmogrify progressive oppressors into faux victims. It is a personal and political justification and weaponization that, by its very audaciousness, can leave opponents momentarily dumbstruck. During their initial stupefaction, a dissenting citizenry is at the greatest risk of being subsumed by the Left’s repressive, collective insanity.

Often, the citizens find it impossible to believe what the Left is doing, as it is so mind-numbingly hard to comprehend rational actors engaging—indeed, celebrating—their outrageous conduct and injurious aims, while claiming to be victims. 

Parental rights prove both the point and provide the line in the sand over which, should the Left successfully cross, you will no longer be a parent or a sovereign citizen of a free republic.

Among those organizations captured during the Left’s long march through the institutions, three powerful entities are painting their outrageous actions as noble and themselves as victims; and they are demanding the Biden Administration’s politically weaponized Department of Justice stifle all dissent to these entities’ radical policies in support of surgically altering the sex of children.

Per the Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra: 

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association all signed the letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging the administration to ‘investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities’ that it claimed were ‘coordinating’ and ‘provoking’ outrage online directed at those providing the controversial services.

Obtained by Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, the letter has all the illiberal hallmarks of the progressive mind, starting with its use of therapeutic political language to claim victimhood and demand the censorship and persecution of all dissent. (It should sound depressingly familiar, as it is the same narrative the Left uses to indoctrinate college students into embracing censorship, i.e., Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance.”) 

These coordinated attacks threaten federally protected rights to health care for patients and their families. The attacks are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care across multiple jurisdictions. Our organizations have called on technology companies to do more to prevent this practice on digital platforms, and we now urge your office to take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.

In sum, these organizations want to end the freedom of association, censor freedom of speech, and prevent the free association of their opponents. Having already attempted to have opponents censored by Big Tech, these organizations now implicitly demand the government collude with these private sector entities’ censors to do it. Most of all, of course, they want the federal government to use its police powers to persecute and silence their opponents. 

As Rufo succinctly concludes, “This is now the Left’s playbook: last year, the National School Board Association, Department of Justice, and F.B.I. worked together to label parents who opposed critical race theory ‘domestic terrorists.’ They want to stifle dissent, suppress speech, and criminalize opposition.”

At root, this is the progressive hubris writ large: “We know what is best for you and your children.” Why? Because they’re credentialled experts and you’re just a parent. You are not permitted to disagree. If you try, the Left will deem you a danger to your children, in particular, and society, in general. 

The leftist collective is already prepping to take your children from you. Consider this Daily Wire report by Luke Rosiak, wherein “a Virginia pro-trans group with Democratic ties says it will help gender-confused students leave their families and ‘rehome’ them with new ‘queer friendly’ guardians.”

This entity, the Pride Liberation Project (PLP), promises runaways—be they “outed students who are facing familial rejection or need to leave their home for another reason”—not only shelter, but also money, transportation, and deceit to protect the minor’s activities from their parents. That PLP has not been licensed by the appropriate state authorities to provide minors with said services is apparently not a problem. 

Nor are parental rights and even legal niceties, such as the recent Virginia Department of Education’s guidance that “schools should not hide a student’s transgender status from his or her parents, and should only call them by new pronouns with parents’ written permission.” According to the PLP’s founder, Aarayan Rawal: “They can say you have to implement these, but if there’s no enforcement mechanism, you’re not gonna do s–t.” 

He then offers the Left’s macabre canard that if its ideological dictates aren’t abided, people will die: 

It’s a lot easier for someone to hide behind a legal argument if they don’t know there’s a queer student whose [sic] about to testify who’s about to say that these guidelines would have literally killed their community and would have literally led to incredible rates of self-harm.

As for the PLP’s actively deceiving parents and encouraging and subsidizing minors to run away from home—what could go wrong?

David Gordon, head of the Virginia Project that tracks ideological indoctrination and the infringement of parental rights in public schools, has an idea:

It is irresponsible and reckless to the extreme to be doing this with other people’s kids. The way this operation works is nearly identical to sex trafficking. This could never be underwritten by any insurer. The chance of one of these kids ending up being sexually abused is almost certain.

For the PLP, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association—and other regressive leftist organizations—the inability to conceive how their actions are harming children is indicative of their purblind hubris. They simply refuse to see not just the probable, but the actual harm their insane and injurious ideology has foisted upon children, parents, and society as a whole, and instead project their sins upon their victims—be they children, parents, or American society as a whole. 

Perceiving themselves as “liberators,” they delude themselves that their malefactions are justified, and their sins ennobled and elevated into virtues, done on behalf of the benighted masses who cannot comprehend it was all done for them. It is why the leftist collective feels no compunction about deceiving parents and curtailing and/or terminating their rights, and risking and ruining the lives of children. Doubtless, too, such delusional hubris is needed for the Left to sleep at night.

It is also why those who dissent must never rest. The leftist collective has come for your children. For America’s parents, people, and republic, it is the Rubicon that cannot be crossed. If the Left can do this to children with impunity, there is nothing they can’t or won’t do to the rest of the citizenry—and they know it. 

Do you? 

Democrats Eschew the Difference Between 'Treating People Equally and Attempting to Make Them Equal'

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

As Joe Biden and the Democrat Party rush to embrace equity over equality in their drive to transform America from the land of opportunity and achievement into a land of wealth redistribution and full-blown socialism, Orwellian examples continue to emerge, reminding us that Biden indeed is “not joking.”

As RedState reported on Thursday, the latest example of the Democrats’ determination to “rebalance” America came from Biden’s Treasury Department head, Janet Yellen‘s announcement of the inaugural members of the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity. The first-of-its-kind committee will provide advice and recommendations to Yellen on efforts to advance racial equity in the economy and address acute disparities for communities of color. As reported by Townhall, Yellen laughingly said:

The Biden Harris administration has made racial equity a centerpiece of our economic agenda. Advancing racial equity is not just a moral priority, it is also vital to our economic success.

Every word of that statement is a demonstrable lie.

The following quote from Yellen is up front and center on the U.S. Treasury Department website:

A critical piece of executing on our racial equity goals is bringing a wide set of outside perspectives and lived experiences to the decision-making table. The Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, made up of members with wide-ranging backgrounds and expertise, will provide important insight and advice to leadership across the department to bolster and inform our equity efforts.

Racial “equity” has no place in a free-market economic agenda, much less in the programs and policies of the United States government, including the Treasury Department. Denying opportunity or suppressing economic success to one group for the benefit and “advancement” of another group is not “moral. Rather, it’s immoral pandering, exploitation, and punishment, always with an eye on the ballot box, a truism clearly understood by Irish playwright and political activist, George Bernard Shaw:

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Moreover, as correctly observed by famed Austrian-British economist and legal theorist F.A. Hayek, a society built on wealth redistribution ultimately leads to servitude for all, as we’ve seen throughout history.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.

The above two quotes combined encapsulate today’s Democrat Party better than anything I’ve yet seen.

Nonetheless, the Democrat march in pursuit of Orwellian “utopia” continues. As noted by Daily Caller, the committee is a product of Treasury’s 2021 “equity assessment.” Biden on his first day in office signed an executive order called “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” that directed federal agencies to conduct equity assessments.A statement “from” Biden begins in a historically correct manner but goes off the rails in the second sentence:

Equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, and our diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths. But for too many, the American Dream remains out of reach. Entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions, have often denied that equal opportunity to individuals and communities.

Our country faces converging economic, health, and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism. Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face.

Again, nonsense. With a reference to Biden’s obsession with “systemic racism” tossed in for good measure.

The Bottom Line

The lengths to which the Democrat Party goes to rationalize, justify, and sell massive wealth redistribution scams to rank-and-file Democrat voters and other low-information voters would be impressive — although still obscene — were it not for the mischaracterization of Americans who understand the words of George Bernard Shaw and F.A. Hayek, and embrace the opportunity offered by the greatest country in history.

Dems Just Admitted They Have Huge Problem That May Cost Them the Midterms

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Republicans seem to be surging with little more than one month before the midterms. There’s even the remarkable story of a Republican ahead by six points and likely to win a House seat in deep-blue territory in Rhode Island for the first time in 30 years.

But right as we have that good news for the Republicans, there’s more bad news for the Democrats.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Executive Director Tim Persico is saying that he doesn’t know if they’re going to have enough money. He said there “are places that I don’t know if we are going to be able to get to” to assist Democrats. “We are just getting outspent everywhere, so it is just a question of how much can we withstand.” He said that was going to leave them making tough choices about potentially winnable races.

“The relative shortfall in outside spending is likely to leave some Democratic incumbents in contested races at sharp advertising disadvantages, while restricting the party’s ability to compete in open seats or to unseat Republican incumbents,” concluded The Post based on conversations with Dem groups.

They’re in even more trouble as the numbers keep getting better for Republican candidates.

Democrats pointed to a TV ad spending advantage by Republican outside groups, which have the flexibility to move money around the House landscape strategically in the final weeks. That edge has become more alarming as a recent shift in the national mood has put more seats in contention for Democrats, who find themselves hamstrung by the Republican advantage in donors on the GOP side.

Another House Democratic strategist said the inability to fully fund key races could prove to be the difference between winning and losing control of Congress, or between keeping Republicans to a five-seat majority and a 15-seat majority. “I don’t think it is hyperbole to say at this point that money is going to make the difference,” said this person, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely about strategy.

Sounds like they’re in deep trouble when it comes down to decisions like that. It could also be that they know they’re going to get blown out and they’re trying to blame money rather than their policies, their lousy candidates, or the folks in the DCCC.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was trying to spread confidence, claiming to Stephen Colbert that they were going to hold the House. But even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t believe her. He said she was going to lose. But what it’s coming down to is just how badly are they going to be blown out when this is all over.

Internal Memos: FBI’s Out-Of-Control Sexual Misconduct Yields Little Punishment — Especially For Top Officials

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

The FBI is allowing senior agency officials accused of sexual impropriety to face lighter penalties than line employees for similar misconduct, according to records provided to Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office by agency whistleblowers. The same records also show that FBI employees under investigation for sexual misconduct quit their jobs before they could face any form of disciplinary action over a period of nearly two decades.

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Grassley claims that protected whistleblower disclosures provided to his office reveal that from 2004-2020, “hundreds of FBI employees have retired or resigned because of sexual misconduct allegations against them and that they did so in order to avoid accountability.”

“For example, according to an internal unclassified Justice Department document from the Office of Disciplinary Appeals titled ‘Retirements and Resignations During Unwelcome Sexual Conduct Adjudications,’ as of December 23, 2020, the Justice Department reviewed the FBI’s disciplinary case database, Javelin, ‘to observe patterns and offer recommendations,'” the letter reads.

“The Justice Department reviewed 8,686 summaries in Javelin and found that from 2004 to December 23, 2020, ‘665 FBI employees, including 45 [Senior Executive Service (SES)]-level employees have retired or resigned following an FBI or [Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG)] investigation into alleged misconduct, but prior to [the Office of Professional
Responsibility’s (OPR)] issuance of a final disciplinary letter,'” it added.

The document allegedly goes on to note that “[o]f those 45 SES-level employees, there is only one instance where an SES-level employee retired or resigned after the FBI or DOJ-OIG completed an investigation into an alleged violation … but before OPR issued a final decision letter.”

“To make matters worse, some of the SES-level employees could have received bonuses before retirement,” Grassley wrote. “Importantly, the document also notes, ‘[t]his dataset does not include retirements or resignations which occurred during an ongoing misconduct investigation or prior to the initiation of a formal investigation.’ In other words, it appears that the number of retirements and resignations could be much higher than 665 individuals.”

Among the more stunning revelations found in the purported memos provided to Grassley’s office is a second unclassified Justice Department document showing that the FBI offers disparate treatment for sexual misconduct depending on the seniority of the official in question.

According to Grassley, the document shows that in recent instances of sexual misconduct, employees have received what appear to be random consequences without much explanation, from week-long suspensions to termination. This “disparate treatment” could “compromis[e] the consistency, fairness, and due process of the FBI’s disciplinary system.”

“The only discernable pattern appears to be that higher-graded employees, especially supervisors, are more likely to have their sexual misconduct case adjudicated under Offense Code 5.22, and therefore subjected to lesser penalties; whereas, lower-graded employees are seemingly more likely to be adjudicated under Offense Code 5.20, and have a statistically greater likelihood of being dismissed for their sexual misconduct,” it added.

“If the Justice Department and FBI can’t ensure the equal application of the law within its own ranks, how can they be trusted to apply the law equally against the American people?” Grassley wrote. “Congress and the American people would like to know what Director Wray and Deputy Director Abbate have done to solve this issue.”

The Plague of McConnellism

Here are five ways McConnell has hurt Republicans and the country as a whole and what we can do about it.

by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch for American Greatness

There is a plague on our country, on the Republican Party and conservatism, in particular. 

A plague is a disastrous evil or affliction, often termed a calamity. As a noxious infestation, it can be a disease causing high mortality (yersinia pestis) and occur in several forms. They can also be persons that cause irritation and are as such a great nuisance, or worse. 

There is no vaccine or drug cocktail to combat or cure it. It has to be surgically removed.

It is called (Mitch) McConnellism.

Senator Addison Mitchell McConnell (R-Ky.), the origin of McConnellism has inflated views of himself, insecurity about his own leadership skills, and is guilty of a failure to listen to others and the populace. He is the senior party leader but he is willing to lose elections just so he can stay in power and milk the uniparty system—largely to enrich himself and continually grow his outsized, yet narrow ego.

The incumbent seven term Republican senator, is unfortunately ensconced as the Senate Minority Leader. He would, if the party succeeds in the November midterm elections, become the Senate Majority Leader, with all the power that entails. Having thwarted the Trump Administration over and over again, he is now seemingly working to defund and defeat quality conservative Republican candidates of the America First variety. 

It is unthinkable that such a person should have any political future or power, whatsoever. Why should he? Certainly not as a Republican. He doesn’t even back the House Republican plan or Commitment to America.

Arguably, McConnell should be voted out of office but he likely won’t run again in four years’ time, anyway, given his advanced age and reading the room. His popularity in his own conservative state stands at less than 45 percent. He has the lowest home state approval rating of any sitting senator. In fact, his own constituents give him a high 49 percent disapproval rating.

It took Trump’s endorsement the last time he ran just to carry him over the finish line. In retrospect, that was a horrible decision, the president should have cut him loose. Today, McConnell’s rating among all national Republican voters stands at an abysmal 30 percent. Almost no one likes or trusts him. Least of all perhaps is Donald Trump, who lately is more virulent about the old SOB than even his most liberal opponents. 

It goes both ways. McConnell has called Trump ignorant, corrupt, incompetent, and unstable. Why? Because Trump would not bend and accommodate McConnell’s selfish plans. He thought himself more powerful and long-lasting than any mere president. In turn, Trump labeled McConnell a broken down political hack, dour, sullen, and unsmiling. He also said he lacked political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality. Then he went on to attack and call his wife names.

Here are five ways McConnell has hurt Republicans and the country as a whole.

• He has opposed Trump and especially in the assessment of the 2020 election.
• He openly blamed Trump for the January 6 attacks and favored his impeachment.
• He is always willing to negotiate and give away the house, his record doing so with both Obama and Biden, speaks for itself.
• He held up many Trump appointments and much legislation.
• He is married to Elaine Chao, Trump’s ill-begotten secretary of transportation, a China supporter, whose family has long benefited from trade with the CCP, as documented at length in Peter Schweizer’s investigatory book, Red Handed.

The proof of McConnell’s China capitulation and paybacks is overwhelming. McConnell’s wife’s family owns 33 huge container ships, the Foremost Group, tied to the Chinese CCP. Even the New York Times reported that Chao used her cabinet post to benefit the company and increase its influence. As they say, “follow the money” and see how the McConnells have massively enriched themselves. 

“Moscow” Mitch, “Cocaine” Mitch, the “Grim Reaper,” “Turtle” and “Old Crow,” are all accurate nicknames given to McConnell for a reason. He was even sarcastically portrayed in an episode of the comedy “South Park.” His actions are often unprincipled, silly, and tactically stupid. He is a grandstander who relishes doing deals rooted in moderate compromise positions. They benefit no one but himself and certainly do not make America foremost.

McConnell may be on Time magazine’s list of 100 most powerful people in the world (for negative power, in his case) but he is thoroughly despised both in the culture and increasingly, by conservative Republicans. If he has a deserved title at all, it might be, Lead RINO.

In all my years in and around political leaders, in the United States and elsewhere, and teaching the virtues of leadership to M.B.A. and Ph.D. students, at Yale and Oxford, as well as Aspen and Davos, I have found that the qualities that make for a profoundly good and successful leader include: statesmanship embedded in visionary attitude and effort; an ability to communicate that vision; integrity and honesty that demonstrate a record of ethics; a skill at decision making—the right decisions at the right time; an ability to inspire others, so as to get other people to follow; delegation to effectively bring a strategy to fruition; and having clear purpose by putting the nation above self.

Mitch McConnell tellingly lacks in all these aspects of leadership and should immediately step down, retire, or be replaced by someone who does. 

His mendacity is without limit. Few politicians care less about the will of the people than the present Senate Minority Leader. Simply put, he must go or “we the people” will push him out.

How does the present Republican Party rid itself of the RINOs?

The case against McConnell is clear but what about all the others who compromise on principle, moderate the message, always give in to the Left and make a killing off the uniparty and their establishment entanglements? 

If, let’s argue, 20 percent of Republicans are RINO-like, why do they exercise inordinate power, control so many positions, and stand in the way of America first?

The only long term solution is not big tentism or a sharing of the spoils. It has to be to vote them out—to strip them of their accumulated power. The way to begin is with their leader—McConnell himself. If he won’t step down from leadership, retire, or move out of the picture then three things need to happen on the day after the midterm election.

President Trump must loudly claim the victory with all those conservative candidates he helped sweep into power, the new senators, especially. Then with them on stage, Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) must declare his candidacy, with the endorsement of all those in Camp Trump, to challenge McConnell and become the Senate Majority Leader. And finally, voters must sign a petition renouncing McConnell and backing Scott. We can rid ourselves of the plague.

According to always-relevant commentator, Machiavelli: the prince, i.e., McConnell, in this case, is a would-be tyrant who employs all the proper techniques for carving out a state that he can govern solely, as a prince. It involves a combination of seduction, diplomacy and repression. 

Such a leader must be opposed. The time for party change has come for real Republicans.

Hetty deserves better, and #NCISLANeedsHetty

 

With another Season that'll mostly be a huge cringeworthy waste (because the only respect that gets handed out is to idiotic fanatics who get nothing but cringe worthy content!) set to start tomorrow, figured it was time for another Hetty centric OP.  (plus, this site needs something non political to try and light up a Saturday, IMO).

Up until Season 10, This show was basically run as perfect as it could be. It was very well established that Hetty was in charge, and that everyone should respect and fear her, and everything ran like a well oiled machine under her guidance. (plus, everyone looked like they wanted to be there and actually work together.).

I have my issues with Season 9, but strangely enough, given how a sheer impossible feat has been achieved in nearly every Season since Season 9 being far worse then the other, Season 9 actually did something right: It provided a well thought out 'blue print' on how to properly handle Hetty on her secret overseas missions! From the very start of Season 9, her location is revealed instead of dragged out for half the Season, Literally everyone is worried about her and wants to find her instead of pretending like their pedestrian issues are more important then her safety, there's frequent updates throughout the first half instead of 1 update every 6 or 7 episodes, and yes. What Hetty is doing is actually SHOWN in a few episodes instead of not at all.

The other thing that Season 9 did right: That whole secret mission back then was properly promoted!! There was enough seeds planted to make it interesting enough for fans to be interested, there was actual hype around it, and it all paid off in the end when Episode 13 (which was part 1 of the 2 part wrap up) got the highest ratings of that Season! Not to mention, the huge wrap up Episode 14 that aired 2 months later (2018 was a Winter Olympics year, and every show goes on break for 2 weeks while they air. And after that, CBS had some big events airing on Sunday for a couple weeks) had a very epic extended trailer released 2 weeks before it aired!! (That is seriously the best way to promote a big episode that would wrap up an arc that everyone wanted to see end.).

Let's face it, what a small and very powerful lady is doing overseas sounds 100000% more interesting then say, A silly married couple (who now look about as romantic as collage roommates) struggling to raise a '16 year old' who legally should never have been adopted to begin with AND who looks like an actual adult instead of a teenager! Or 2 diversity tokens whining about how 'tough' their lives are when they're not being coddled (and every one of their fantastically over hyped 'issues' that are purely invented by politically stupid writers), and just about everything else you can think of.

If what Hetty is doing overseas was actually USED properly instead of as a pathetic throwaway excuse to include her in an episode when she's actually not in it, then maybe the ratings wouldn't be so low. Maybe lots more fans would actually be more interested in the show instead of bashing it at every turn. And maybe there would be more 'excitement' and promotion from the rest of the cast instead of the same generic, boring, and probably forced Instagram videos saying how 'excited' they are about what they are doing and what their 'favorite' episodes from a previous Season is. (it looks so fake. Who in their right mind would think adopting an illegal alien in a way that would 100% never happen in a right universe is their 'favorite'?!).

Simple answer to crumbling ratings and very low and generic interest: Make Hetty's latest mission (probably shouldn't say 'latest' since it's been going on for 2 years now) a key arc! Give out details that sound interesting! Give fans an actual reason to WANT to be interested in what she's doing instead of the 'keeping everyone in the dark' crap! And actually PROMOTE the mission right! Fans were interested back in Season 9 because there was good reason to, it can be repeated here as well if there was actual effort from the writers and from CBS.

Giving fans very boring episodes and leaving out the good stuff year after year isn't going to help, it'll just keep making things worse. And as bizarre as it seems, I don't wish for this show to one day end on a very bad note. I still very much hope for an epiphany of sorts from the writers and that they finally once and for all see who can bring this show back it's spark that it held for so many years before Season 10 took it away for too long, and that is Hetty.

The First Thing Republicans Should Do When They Take Back Congress Is Impeach Merrick Garland

Garland has weaponized the DOJ / FBI, using them as blunt instruments to criminalize the Biden administration’s political opposition. 

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

Should Republicans take control of the U.S. House and Senate in November, their first order of business — before tax and spending cuts, abortion restrictions, gun legislation, or anything else in their predictably anodyne agenda — should be to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Under Garland, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been thoroughly politicized and weaponized, transformed into instruments of terror aimed at ordinary American citizens who have the temerity to oppose the Biden administration’s radical agenda. 

Tax cuts for domestic manufacturers, or whatever out-of-touch, boilerplate thing GOP leaders imagine their priority should be once they regain Congress, can wait. The urgent thing now is to impeach and remove Garland before he causes irreparable harm to the republic.

Everything Garland has done as attorney general has been mendaciously political, from smearing parents who speak out at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” to targeting peaceful anti-abortion activists while doing nothing about actual pro-abortion vigilantes attacking churches and crisis pregnancy centers. He has to be stopped, and a determined GOP-led Congress is the only thing that can stop him.

And by the way, once they’ve gotten rid of Garland, congressional Republicans should make their very next order of business dismantling the FBI and DOJ. Both of these agencies have proven themselves to be corrupted beyond repair. They are enemies of the American people and must be scrapped entirely and replaced by something new — something with far less power and far more accountability. 

If that sounds drastic or melodramatic, as it might to some indifferent or merely idiotic Republican lawmakers, consider the shocking news this week that Garland’s DOJ has once again used the FBI to target peaceful anti-abortion activists for exercising their First Amendment rights. On Tuesday night, armed FBI agents swarmed into the home of 73-year-old anti-abortion activist Chet Gallagher on the outrageous pretext that he had violated an obscure federal statute, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or “FACE Act.”

In fact, what Gallagher and 10 other activists had done was pray and sing in the hallway of a medical building that houses an abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, last March. The protest was entirely peaceful, as ample video footage — livestreamed on Facebook by the activists themselves — attests. A few of them were arrested without incident by local police on misdemeanor trespass charges and promptly released.

But in Garland’s DOJ, what they did was use “force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services.” So reads the indictment, a document so disconnected from reality that its mere existence beggars belief. 

And yet it comes on the heels of an equally shocking FBI raid last month on the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven and anti-abortion activist who was arrested at gunpoint in front of his terrified wife and small children. His crime? He alleged violated — you guessed it — the FACE Act.

But in Houck’s case, the charges are even more spurious than those leveled against the Tennessee activists. The incident in question involved an altercation last October between Houck and a man named Bruce Love, a pro-abortion activist and escort — not an abortion provider or a woman seeking an abortion — near an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. Love allegedly got in the face of Houck’s 12-year-old son and was relentlessly harassing him. An altercation ensued, and Houck reportedly shoved Love, who fell to the ground.

But as my colleague Margot Cleveland recently noted in these pages, by Love’s own account the altercation didn’t amount to a violation of the FACE Act “because Houck was standing at a corner away from the abortion facility, no clients were involved, and the alleged assault had nothing to do with so-called reproductive services.” That is to say, the government’s case here is extremely weak and will likely be dismissed before a trial ever takes place, as a fair number of other alleged violations of the FACE Act have been in the past.

What’s more, Cleveland detailed how Houck’s attorney was in touch with the Justice Department about the matter months before the FBI raided Houck’s home, and offered to have Houck appear voluntarily in response to a summons. That email was sent in June, but the first response Houck’s attorney got from the DOJ was on Sept. 23, after Houck had already been arrested at his home at gunpoint in front of his family.

These cases, though, are just the latest in a long train of egregiously selective enforcement of federal law by the Garland DOJ that’s clearly intended to intimidate otherwise law-abiding American citizens. The same U.S. attorney pursuing the bogus case against Houck, Anita Eve, has also handled some 40 Jan. 6 cases, in which similarly over-the-top arrest tactics were used. Indeed, Garland’s DOJ has thrown the book at hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants whose misdeeds in many cases amount to little more than unintentional trespassing.

Meanwhile, the FBI won’t say whether it has made even a single arrest in the dozens of attacks against churches, crisis pregnancy centers, and other pro-life organizations in the wake of the Dobbs leak in May. The FBI admitted to The Daily Signal this week (in a statement that is almost identical to one it issued the outlet in June) that it is investigating the attacks, and even that it considers some of them potential acts of domestic violent extremism or possible violations of the FACE Act.

Yet for all that, the FBI has failed to announce a single arrest in connection with some 83 attacks on Catholic Churches and 73 crisis pregnancy centers. Strange then that it would have time to track down Houck and the 73-year-old Gallagher (not to mention 87-year-old Eva Edl, a woman named in the Tennessee indictment).

All of this amounts to precisely what it looks like: the weaponization of the Justice Department for partisan political ends. If a new Republican majority in Congress does nothing else next year, it should impeach Garland and dismantle a hopelessly corrupted DOJ and FBI. Whether GOP leaders realize it, the future of the republic might just depend on them gutting up in the next Congress and doing what needs to be done.