Sarah Palin got it right. The Republican Party desperately needs to purge the party of RINO’s. We need to complete the RINO PLASTY. We have just experienced the most destructive, arrogant and irresponsible lame duck session of congress in our nation’s history. This congress has an approval rating of about 13%, the lowest since anyone started counting. The American people voted last month to remove the current leadership of congress from power. The House experienced the most massive turnover of seats since 1948. The only reason the Senate did not switch parties was that an equal number of Republicans and Democrats were running. Since Democrats had nearly 60% of the seats, they only escaped because so many of them were not up for election.
Common sense should have told Republicans to simply say no. They should have limited this congress to passing the extension of the tax cuts and to passing a short term funding resolution. Every day the Republican leaders should have said: “the American people have spoken. They have voted to radically change congress and it is irresponsible for this current congress, who has been voted out of power, to jam through legislation that would never be approved by the “elected” congress. If all 42 Republicans in the Senate had remained united, they could have made this happen.
Sadly the normal cast of RINO’s could not resist compromising with Democrats. As a result, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid shoved a mountain of crap down our throats and the Republicans in the Senate failed in their duty to stop it. It is disgraceful and should be a reminder that we simply cannot afford to keep electing RINO’s, just because they pretend to be Republicans. The arrogance of these people is shattering. This year several RINO’s were defeated in Republican primary elections. Even though some of the replacement candidates lost, we are still better off than if those RINO’s had been elected. It is simply better to have a liberal Democrat, who you know is a liberal Democrat, than to have a slimy RINO who pretends to represent your values but doesn’t. The bottom line is that replacing a Democrat with a RINO results in Democrats remaining in power, only with more political cover.
Sadly, the damage has been done and most of it cannot be reversed. The good news is that when this lame duck session finally, thank God, adjourns, it will be over. The new congress may not get much accomplished, but they will stop this kind of nonsense.
Here is why everyone should be optimistic. Democrats had their day. Their day is done. We are still here. Everything changes on January 5th. Here are the reasons to be optimistic about next year and our nations’ future.
- The Senate campaigns for 2012 start on January 5th.
Unlike this year, a lot more Democrats than Republicans are up for re-election.
Democrats:
Diane Feinstein, California
Tom Caper, Delaware
Ben Nelson, Florida
Daniel Akaka, Hawaii
Ben Cardin, Maryland
Debbie Stabenow, Michigan
Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
Jon Tester, Montana
Ben Nelson, Nebraska
Bob Menendez, New Jersey
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico
Kent Conrad, North Dakota
Sherrod Brown, Ohio
Bob Casey, Pennsylvania
Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
Jim Webb, Virginia
Maria Cantwell, Washington
Joe Manchin, West Virginia
Herb Kohl, Wisconsin
Joe Lieberman, Connecticut
Bernie Sanders, Vermont.
Republicans
Jon Kyle, Arizona
Richard Lugar, Indiana
Olympia Snowe, Maine
Scott Brown, Massachusetts
Roger Wicker, Mississippi
John Ensign, Nevada
Bob Corker, Tennessee
Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas
Orin Hatch, Utah
John Barrasso, Wyoming.
Note: In addition to having 20 Democratic seats up for re-election, the tea party can also take on some of those RINOs.
The 2012 Presidential election starts on January 5th, 2010.
Democrats
Barack Obama
(Note: I really cannot come up with a single Democrat that even looks like a viable primary opponent for Barack Obama at this point. We have a clearly imcompetent President, yet the Democrat Party does not appear to have anyone better available. This, of course, assumes that Hillary Clinton is serious about not running. Keep in mind that in order to win a Democratic primary, one has to be more progressive than Obama.)
Republicans
Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee
David Petraeus
Newt Gingrich
Bobby Jindal
Tim Pawlenty
Chris Christy
Rudy Guiliani
Haley Barbour
Jeb Bush
Rick Perry
Note: This is just the list as of now and I probably left some people out. There are now 32 Republican governors. Several of them could easily emerge over the next 12 months to become a serious factor. Republicans were elected governors in 12 swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida.
Republicans’ did get the Bush tax cuts extended, for everyone. The cut in payroll tax will also help. The extension of unemployment benefits was going to happen anyway, because no one in either party has the guts to make the tough decision to cut off benefits.
It is always darkest just before dawn. We just ended the darkest of the dark. Nancy Pelosi is out of power. Harry Reid is also out of power, because he does not have close to 60 votes in the new Senate and a lot of those Democrats up for election in 2012 are going to start moving rapidly to the right. Barack Obama is hopelessly incompetent and his only chance for re-election is to start working with Republicans. Even if he somehow gets re-elected, which does not look likely, he will be a very different President than we had for the last two years.
The really good news about 2012 is that this country saw a battle between the tea party and progressives. The tea party won. Progressives just got done pushing through some nasty stuff, but it was the last minute desperate act by a political movement permanently on its way out of power.
Happy New Year.
TDM