By DEXTER DUGGAN
Wondering why Republican majorities in Congress haven’t kept the repeal promise the GOP made for seven years against Obamacare, even though a Republican is in the White House to sign it now?
Donald Trump may have ridden to presidential victory with vows to “drain the swamp.” But Congress has its dinosaur ways of getting places.
If reptilian captains long in the tooth are commanding flat-bottomed airboats through the cypress and mangrove tangles, they won’t take Trump swiftly to the dock, or health-care doc, he wants.
The mere act of putting on work gloves doesn’t mean the work has been accomplished.
Think back just two years. Horrifying new videos from the California-based Center for Medical Progress in 2015 revealed Planned Parenthood abortionists cutting out babies’ organs for illegal sale — brains, hearts, kidneys, lungs, just fill out the order sheet for fresh meat.
It was a public-relations disaster for America’s biggest abortionist. But media-cowed Congress kept shoveling a half-billion dollars of taxpayer money annually to the repulsive butchers. Shock and horror weren’t sufficiently motivating. The revulsion needed reinforcement. The familiar way of doing things was too hard to shake off.
Catholic Speaker of the House John Boehner helped keep the tax funding going. Then his successor, Catholic Speaker Paul Ryan, said his hands were tied, even though Ryan had some leverage, if he cared to use it, against abortion-pushing fanatic Barack Obama in the Omnibus spending bill.
But, having surrendered, Ryan subsequently tried legislative legerdemain before voters’ eyes of cutting off the PP funding in a stand-alone bill — which, of course, Obama, with nothing to lose from his viewpoint, vetoed.
In legislative halls whose décor is smoke and fun-house mirrors, true reform is as hard to come by as a clear image.
The government has grown so gigantic that cutting off even part of one tentacle leaves the octopuses’ team barely impeded. The Tea Party movement arose early in Obama’s presidential reign because voters saw how defiant they needed to be. Draining the swamp meant carrying away more than a few tea cups full of greenish water.
In 2016, Trump successfully appealed to those who understood how huge the task. But if Trump sometimes won’t even help his own players, who’ll cover his back?
Who helped give Trump more credit with voters as the billionaire sought to establish his border-protection credentials during the presidential campaign than Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who repeatedly took to rally stages to vouch for Trump’s intentions?
Yet Arpaio went to trial in late June over charges contrived by the open-borders gang, including the Obama Department of Justice, alleging violation of a hostile federal judge’s order. Trump’s administration did nothing to end the legal charade against the former sheriff, defeated last November in his bid for a seventh term after the carefully timed criminal accusation.
An Associated Press story posted at the PBS Newshour site on June 26 said: “The…trial in federal court in Phoenix comes after the 85-year-old spent nine of his 24 years in office doing the sort of local immigration enforcement that President Donald Trump has advocated. . . .
“Arpaio’s lawyers say the former sheriff is charged with a crime for cooperating with U.S. immigration officials, which the Trump administration now encourages,” the AP added.
The trial continued as this hardcopy issue of The Wanderer went to press on June 29.
Arizona GOP activist Rob Haney, a fan of both Trump and Arpaio, told The Wanderer on June 28:
“I am disappointed that Trump has not yet withdrawn this Obama-initiated, DOJ politically motivated prosecution of Sheriff Arpaio and thereby made moot the contempt-of-court case. The judge has already shown his prejudice against Arpaio.”
Haney said culpability for judicial prejudice applies both to the federal judge who had harassed Arpaio, G. Murray Snow, and the federal judge trying the criminal case without a jury, Susan Bolton.
“And, truth be known,” Haney added, “the courts and Obama have shown nothing but contempt for those of us attempting to enforce the law against Obama’s non-enforcement policies. Trump knows the lengths the ‘left’ will go to in order to destroy a political opponent. Trump should immediately end this charade.”
As for the Republican attempt to deal with a much larger issue, repealing collapsing Obamacare, national conservative radio host Mark Levin expressed mystification on June 22.
Why is the GOP so scared of repealing Obamacare, Levin wondered. Widespread opposition to Obama’s ramming through the massive government medical program with only Democrat politicians’ support is what won Republicans their congressional majority and the White House, he said.
Levin’s guest, Daniel Horowitz, of the Conservative Review site, said the recently revealed Senate Republican health bill meant the premiums people pay will continue to rise, and the bill just transplants Obamacare from the Democrats’ lawn to the Republicans’.
Where was GOP leadership clamor to poison this noxious weed?
Like the version of the health-care bill that finally passed the House not long ago then was set aside while senators devised their own take, the Senate bill soon was perceived to lack sufficient support in the closely divided upper chamber and it, too, was pulled off the schedule for reworking.
Hopes the Senate would pass a health bill before the July Fourth holiday fell apart, meaning there’ll be new deadline pressures to move the legislation before the August recess begins. If indeed Congress goes ahead with plans for that recess.
Although valuable constituent contact can be done during such an absence, leaving D.C. again so soon could reinforce the impression Congress vacations more than it works, and works without much result.
Part of the problem, of course, arises from dominant media’s focus on angles they prefer to create an issue, such as people losing medical coverage. Indeed, a typically venomous opinion article in the left-wing UK Guardian posted June 28 said Republicans’ “dream” is “denying health care to millions of people.”
However, national talk host Rush Limbaugh on June 27 said not to forget the hundreds of millions of unwilling Americans suffering the burdens of Obamacare, as well as those who’d welcome losing forced coverage so they could buy what they want.
The Democrat Party could only thank itself for having pushed so hard against the populace that voters decided to break its dominance.
Think back to when conservative citizen outrage birthed the Tea Party, energizing voters first to devastate the House Democrats’ majority in 2010 and then put the GOP on the road to capturing the Senate and White House, too.
Obviously dominant media didn’t like what the Tea Party portended. But neither did the GOP establishment, which was more comfortable with cutting deals, settling for second place, and quietly assenting to the nation being shoved further left.
Nor was the passivity of the GOP attractive to rebellious Tea Partiers, who debated whether they should go the third-party route or align with an existing party. They chose the GOP because it at least was more congenial to their ideals, and they didn’t have to create an entire separate party structure.
Commentator Jeff Greenfield posted an article at Politico Magazine on June 28 speculating about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R., Ky.) chances of getting a health-care bill approved. Greenfield told the story of a man who bought what was billed as a “hot meat pie” but, upon biting into it, discovered it was cold and meatless.
When he complained, the story goes, the vendor explained that “hot meat pie” was just a name given to the pie, not an actual description of what it had.
One suspects that voters across the nation who managed to give the GOP its overall D.C. majority — as well as dominance at a number of state capitols — aren’t going to be satisfied if they’re handed a slice of pizza but told it’s filet mignon.
A Bailout
Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the national Tea Party Patriots, issued a statement posted, among other places, at the Maricopa County, Ariz., Republican “News & Updates.”
Martin said McConnell had promised he’d “repeal Obamacare ‘root and branch.’ Those are his words, not mine. When he was running for office, he was quite clear: give us power, and Obamacare is gone. That’s why it is inexcusable for him to draft his health-care bill in secret, and then unveil this watered-down ‘repeal bill’ that is nothing more than a big-government bailout for the health-insurance industry. . . .
“Back in 2010, you and I were right when we warned that Obamacare will drive up health-care costs, cancel policies, disrupt existing doctor-patient relationships, kill jobs, and add to the national debt,” Martin continued.
“Well, I am telling you right now — if Republicans fail to repeal Obamacare and just tinker around the edges instead, then costs will continue rising, the deficit will go up, and the Constitution’s restraints on government power will be weakened even further. We’ll be stuck with government-controlled health insurance forever,” she said.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), among others, has warned that if Republicans can’t deliver on dumping Obamacare after all their promises, they’re in danger of losing their D.C. majority.
It might not make much sense to turn control back to the Democratic Party that caused the problem in the first place, but if voters are mad enough, dishing out punishment may be their priority.
Cultural Catholic Pelosi
A tougher question would be whether they’d be willing to re-empower as House speaker the widely disliked but tenacious and pro-abortion Cong. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who thinks her hand was born to wield the gavel, even though she has a lot of objections to babies getting born to start with.
Cultural Catholic Pelosi’s conscience seems to be troubling her, which God would be happy to see her solve by going to make a sincere private Confession. Then it might not seem so offensive that she claims to reflect God’s thinking on health care and global warming, even though God currently seems so undecided in Pelosi’s mind on whether to slaughter infants.
Just scaring voters with Pelosi, though, is a pretty poor substitute for Republicans being able to show voters they can deliver.
Standing by what you believe actually may win results. Trump stood by his plans for enhancing U.S. security even though politicized lower courts rejected his proposed travel restrictions. But even the U.S. Supreme Court, politicized as it also is, had to agree unanimously with him on June 26 that the U.S. deserves better entry protection.
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