Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
The LA Times takes on global warming claims, Democrats unite against Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Starbucks introduces a new dark brew, and it's over for Kris and Bruce Jenner!
Since his election as a nominal independent in 2012, Maine Senator Angus King has been a reliable vote for the Democrats, with whom he has chosen to caucus. Considering that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee actively worked for the former governor and against the nominal candidate from its own party, King's independence seemed to be more a figure of speech than an actual political stance. But with Democratic control of the Senate very much in question this November, it turns out Majority Leader Harry Reid can't depend on him as much as perhaps he thought he could. As The Hill reports, King is now making it clear that his vote will be very much up for grabs in January when the next Congress meets and that he will go with whichever party is in the majority.
The best indication that King is beginning to shore up his ties with the GOP Senate caucus came yesterday when he was the only member of the Senate to cross party lines on the vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act.The vote on the bill was a Democratic ploy intended to embarrass GOP senators who could be depicted as voting against gender equality. The legislation did nothing to correct inequities that existing laws don't already account for and its substance was largely a gift to trial lawyers, a key element in Democratic fundraising. But King wouldn't play along and voted no along with all of the GOP senators (Reid also voted no as a procedural tactic so he could resurrect the bill at some point in the future). While no one should assume that King is turning his coat before he has to, his decision to defy the Democrats on this issue was perhaps a declaration of real independence from the party with which he has associated himself since taking office. More than anything it is a sign that the proverbial rats are leaving the Democrats' Senate ship before it sinks.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Friday said the GOP has become a "dysfunctional" party that has spent more time infighting over ObamaCare than targeting Democrats who passed the law.
McCain blamed Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah.), the leaders of the movement to tie defunding of ObamaCare to the threat of a government shutdown, for driving wedges between Republicans. Both have appeared in ads attacking fellow GOP lawmakers.
"We are dividing the Republican Party," McCain said on CBS. In his nearly 30 years in the Senate, McCain said he has never seen the infighting among members of his party so bad.
"Rather than attacking Democrats and maybe trying to persuade those five or six Democrats that are leaning Republican, we are now launching attacks against Republicans funded by commercials that Sen. Lee and Sen. Cruz appear in."
And this is just a small sampling of the kind of crap that McCain has been doing and saying since the 1990s. He's always courted the Establishment Media by bashing members of his own party because he knows they can't get enough of that stuff. Of course, he found out very quickly how fake their admiration of him really is once he found himself competing with Barack Obama in 2008.
Since getting his ass kicked that year McCain has pursued a policy of getting back in the good graces of the media by bashing Conservatives and siding with Obama as much as he possibly can. Where was McCain on the night that Rand Paul stood for 13 hours in filibuster? He was having dinner with Obama at the Jefferson Hotel, along with several other Vichy Republicans. It's ironic that McCain is bashing Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for attacking other Republicans for not going along with their proposals. One of the common themes of the articles linked above is that McCain ruthlessly attacks fellow Republicans who don't back his policy initiatives, including intervening in the Syrian civil war on the side of Al-Qaeda and other jihadi genocidal maniacs. He also doesn't like it when they oppose Democrat policy initiatives or object to Dear Leader's divisive speeches. And here's some additional hypocrisy regarding his opposition to the Cruz-Lee strategy of defunding ObamaCare: McCain was in favor of that strategy before he was against it.
In late 2009, the Senate was debating Obamacare but had to shift off Obamacare to switch over to deal with military funding which had been included in a Continuing Resolution (CR). McCain, along with Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Richard Burr (R-NC), Mike Johanns (R-NE), and Bob Corker (R-TN), all voted to hold up military funding before Christmas amid the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to the Senate roll call records.
At that time, Senate Republicans had only had 40 members so they could not hold up Obamacare at a cloture vote. Until Brown won the special election in Massachusetts, they planned to stall to try to hold off Reid as long as they could. They also hoped constituent pressure over Obamacare's unpopularity would aid them if some Democrats had to face voters over the holidays. As a result, they actually filibustered a military funding bill in an attempt to buy time.
"Republicans have said their goal is to delay the bill and force Senate Democrats to go home and face their constituents, hoping for some supporters of the measure to return after New Year's too fearful to back the legislation," the Washington Post wrote at the time - a strategy that is all too familiar to what Cruz is advocating now.
Why did the Republicans lose then? Several GOP senators abandoned the strategy and voted with Reid to move the Senate along. Those who broke with McCain and the rest of the Senate Republicans were Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Arlen Specter (D-PA) (who had just switched parties), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX); of that group, only Collins still holds office in the U.S. Senate.
Obviously McCain doesn't really have a problem with this particular procedural tactic. He's attempted to use it himself. So what's the problem? Well, the Tea Party was in its infancy in late 2009 and had yet to send anybody to Congress.
Since the rise of the Tea Party, however, McCain has reflexively cozied up to the likes of Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, as well as Obama himself, because he prefers to stand with his fellow Beltway Establishment elitists - regardless of party affiliation - than with those who represent the grassroots base of the GOP. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and other members of a new generation of Senate GOP leaders are a threat to the hegemony of the Establishment. That's why they are being attacked by McCain and his allies. It's that simple. They stand with us. "Maverick" stands with...well, you know.
This is absolutely infuriating to me. Consider this the pathetic coda to McCain's ridiculous rant following Rand Paul's filibuster last spring. McCain also referred to Rand Paul and those senators who stood with him (including Ted Cruz) as "wacko birds."
For myself, I'm not embarrassed that I voted for McCain in 2008. I'm a Republican and he was the party's nominee and that's how I roll. But it would be accurate to say that I'm disappointed that my party nominated him in the first place and that my first-ever vote in a presidential election had to be cast for this asshole. The GOP must do better!
Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit cheerfully acknowledges that he's fairly RINO-ish by most Conservative standards, but even he's had enough of McCain's bullshit.
That headline is Justin Amash's joke, not mine, but it's not much of an exaggeration. This is, essentially, the Democratic response: ObamaCare was duly passed, it was an issue in a presidential campaign that the GOP lost, end of story - whether or not there are 51 or even 60 votes in the Senate to defund this thing. He actually used the phrase "elections have consequences," which must be the first time a member of the *minority* party has ever tossed that into a debate. Like Ramesh Ponnuru says, weren't Ted Cruz and Mike Lee elected too?
Watching this was the first time I felt that he might be serious about retiring in 2016. The reaction to it on Twitter among righties, even those who have criticized Cruz for his "defund" strategy, was more uniformly, stridently negative than the response to any other display of maverick-iness in recent memory. And understandably so: There's no reason for McCain to go out and carry Obama's and Reid's water on this except his own antipathy to Cruz, Paul, and the other "wacko birds." It's not merely the betrayal, it's the pettiness of it. More so than even Mitch McConnell or Boehner, I think he's become public enemy number one among Republicans for tea partiers. He'll have a ferocious primary challenge in three years, and if he intends to defeat it, at some point he’ll have to start making nice with the Cruz/Paul contingent. I think he’d rather quit and enjoy the rest of his term sticking thumbs in their eyes.
"Elections have consequences" was only half the speech, though. The other half has Maverick in high dudgeon over Cruz wondering yesterday whether the opponents of his "defund" strategy would have also, ahem, stood up to Hitler. Given how many interventionists there are on the other side of him on this issue, I'm…reasonably sure that most would have. It's a lame Godwinian flourish, although RINO-haters no doubt will consider the comparison insulting to Neville Chamberlain, if anything. But seriously: After more than 21 hours of Cruz talking about ObamaCare, the key part of his speech that McCain feels obliged to put front and center with America watching is…a throwaway line about Nazi appeasers? This is what Maverick decided he needed to do with his precious moments on the floor and his credibility as a so-called "reasonable Republican?" Retirement can't come too soon.
Amen to that! I agree that McCain knows he's all done and will take the rest of his time in office to go on the mother of all RINO rampages against his GOP colleagues and the grassroots Conservatives they represent. So, with that in mind, I'm declaring my own private war against him.
My opening salvo against him deals with the disingenuous tactic of throwing McCain's military service - especially the torture he endured as a POW in the Vietnam War - in the face of anybody who dares criticize him. He definitely deserves all due respect for his service and the suffering he experienced because of it. But as I said to somebody on Twitter last night, it doesn't give him - or anybody, for that matter - a lifetime free pass from criticism. It's an absurd and insulting premise, not to mention a total cop out.
It's also a tactic designed to stop the conversation, in the same way that liberals employ false accusations of "racism" in order to delegitimize a person's position and, thus, halt the debate.
McCain is a U.S. Senator and has been for a long time. He's been our party's nominee for president. He's been in the public arena and been heavily involved in legislating our lives. Not only does he not deserve to be above criticism but it would be absolutely un-American to place him or anybody else on that kind of pedestal, especially while they are still actively involved in crafting public policy.
When you watch the clips of McCain's response to Rand Paul back in March and Ted Cruz earlier today (less than an hour after Cruz finished), it's really remarkable the amount of hostility he displays, both in his words and his delivery. And this is a so-called "Republican" going after a member of his own party! I can't remember ever witnessing a similarly hostile response offered up by McCain in opposition to a Democrat. Not even when he was running for president! With regards to Cruz's remark about appeasing Nazis I would like to point out a couple of things. Was it an example of Godwin's Law? Perhaps. But if so, it's no worse than the similar comparison to appeasers that warmongers like McCain himself are in the habit of using when describing people like Rand Paul as "isolationists." And, of course, other words - like "anarchists" and "arsonists" - have been repeatedly used by Democrats. And not just any Democrats but their respective leaders in the Senate and the House. So to hell with civility! But since I'm feuding with McCain now, I no longer give a damn who gets offended. To those who think that McCain should be above criticism simply because he's a combat veteran I would ask this question: How far does that go? After all, John Kerry was a decorated combat veteran as well. It doesn't make him any less of a scumbag. Do we excuse a mass murderer because he served his country once upon a time? If you think so, then let me tell you the story of another decorated combat veteran who exploited that status for political purposes...
Remember back in March when John McCain and Lindsey Graham crapped all over Rand Paul's epic 13-hour filibuster against John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director? McCain called Rand and those who stood with him "wacko birds." Graham actually switched from opposing Brennan to voting for him, admittedly to spite Rand Paul.
"I was going to vote against him until the filibuster, so he picked
up one vote," Graham said, laughing to reporters in the Capitol.
"I thought Brennan was arrogant, a bit shifty," he said, but added
that he was going to vote for Brennan because the vote had become a
"referendum on the drone program."
So it comes as no big surprise to read this from Politico:
Yet during one of Obama's toughest times as president, there was McCain, sitting down last week with him in the Oval Office for a private strategy session. At the urging of new White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who has sought better ties with Republicans, Obama has had more substantive discussions with McCain in the past five months than he did in his first four years in office, according to associates of both men. Suddenly, the two are working together on issues ranging from immigration to the deficit.
"I'm getting nervous," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), McCain's closest friend in the Senate. "I told Denis McDonough, 'I don't know what you've done: You've hijacked him.'"
"Ever since the election, we've had conversations and phone calls," McCain told POLITICO in an interview. "And I think we share many agenda items that we can work on together, ranging from immigration reform, the prison in Guantánamo, to working perhaps on a grand bargain, security of our embassies and consulates. There are a bunch of issues that we share."
Last month, McCain was one of just four Republicans to vote for the failed bill to expand gun background checks, a centerpiece of Obama's agenda. McCain is a chief architect of the Senate immigration bill supported strongly by the White House. He's expressed deep reservations about GOP threats to filibuster Obama’s Cabinet-level nominees. He's slammed his fellow Republican senators for blocking Senate Democratic efforts to begin bicameral budget negotiations with the House. And he’s even suggested new tax revenues could be part of a grand bargain.
Lindsey Graham isn't getting nervous...he's getting jealous.
Click here to read Michael Walsh's comprehensive demolition of Maverick's legacy. Awesome.
