As indicated in our earlier post, conservatives have cause to rejoice greatly this week, scoring three major victories en route to overcoming the malaise that set in after last November's Democrat-sweep of the House and Senate.
What the MSM and the punditocracy have consistently failed to note is that this defeat was caused by an increasing amount of Republican incumbents who seemed intent on using their power to behave like Democrats. I.e., using their positions to dispense favors (earmarks) to wealthy interest groups, all for the purpose of buying large amounts of votes from them. Just like the Democrats have always done.
However, the Repubs had held onto their majority for the better part of 12 years by hewing, pretty much, to most of the tenets of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. Most particularly by controlling spending and beefing up the national defense which had been eviscerated by the Clintonista's misdirection of the "peace dividend," which they used to fund up pet programs to placate their leftist constituent groups.
When the Repubs started acting like Dems, their base stayed home. Worse still, the "Reagan Democrats" who'd been voting pretty solidly Republican since 1980 apparently decided that if the Repubs were going to act like Democrats, well then, they had ought to go out and elect REAL tax-and-spend Democrats, thus sealing the Republicans' doom.
Acting like the "stupid party" they have often been, the Republican minority didn't help its position when Congress changed hands in January, relentlessly supporting the asinine stuff that had gotten their friends thrown out of office to begin with. The three issues that prove the point all came, perhaps coincidentally, to a head this week. They include:
- The Bush-Kennedy-Reid-Whomever Immigration Bill, aka "The Amnesty Bill"
- The Supreme Court's somewhat muddy ruling against the country's suicidal Affirmative Action industry
- The move by lefties and, astonishingly, by some Repubs, to renew the "Fairness Doctrine" as a way of eliminating Conservative talk radio.
- By declaring the second "amnesty" in roughly the last 25 years, the bill would clearly communicate to any and all prospective immigrants, including the occasional rogue Islamofascist, that the U.S. was no longer serious about supporting its national sovereignty and identity—precisely the things that have caused foreign nationals to emigrate here to begin with;
- By nakedly getting in bed with rich corporate donors to create an endless flow of low-wage workers in any number of industries, the bill demonstrated that politicians and industrial barons were in clear collusion, all the better to keep wages stagnant throughout the general populace which has, as a result, has endured an amazing erosion of earning power over the last two decades because of this; and
- Middle class and working class Americans not designated as "disadvantaged" minorities were fast-becoming the new lower class as leftist class warfare, exemplified in the ultimate aim of this bill, was being waged on anyone who wanted to work hard and earn a traditional American lifestyle.
In short, American middle-tier citizens were "as mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore." Energized by, you guessed it, talk radio and the conservative blogosphere, they barraged their cynical congressmen to kill this misbegotten bill whose intent they knew full-well was to further marginalize middle-class citizens and their values.
Michelle Malkin, in her running coverage of the action, provides this particularly insightful observation by South Carolina Republican Senator DeMint (the good SC senator) which goes a long way toward explaining what gradually happened to the amnesty travesty:
“This immigration bill has become a war between the American people and their government. It’s a crisis of confidence…This vote today is really not about immigration. It’s about whether we are going to listen to the American people…the allocation of time as we approach this vote is very symbolic. the supporters of this bill out of an hour’s time have allocated 10 minutes to the views of the American people.”
The Amnesty Bill's resounding defeat was a brilliant example of grass-roots populism overwhelming the tone-deaf elitists who are currently running both major parties. In short, the average American citizen, nearly always loathe to stir up any trouble, finally realized that his entire way of life was on the line and decided to draw a line in the sand in order to vigorously oppose his gradual but inevitable marginalization. Congratulations to all. Eternal vigilance, however, is still advised. Ted Kennedy, the ultimate elitist and the Democrats' Chief Bloviator, still lurks in the shadows, stung by this defeat. And even George Bush, whom we generally support, has yet to realize that his support for this monster of a bill has now truly relegated both he and his administration to the status of genuine lame ducks. This, gents, is a classic example of what happens when you don't listen and really piss off the normally silent majority.
Meanwhile, yesterday, as the usual race-baiters demonstrated in front of the Supreme Court, entertaining their fervent supporters in the media, the Roberts Court, in spite of scathing dissents by the court's socialists and a lukewarm endorsement by Justice Kennedy, eroded, albeit not totally, the extraordinarily damaging policy of affirmative action as it relates to public school integration. For decades, the primary purpose of public education in this country has been distorted as money and personnel have been expended on a massive scale to make every classroom "look like America," whatever the Sam Hill that means.
Budgets that should have gone toward upgrading physical plants and hiring more qualified teachers went instead toward massive school bus purchases and, you might imagine, massive increases in gasoline bills necessitated by all these vehicles whose sole purpose, in the end, was to fulfill by force, Socialist fantasies of classrooms made racially diverse to the tenth of a percent. The ruling will probably have a gradual, erosive effect on this wretched policy which elevated phony racial equality above excellence in education.
It took decades to wreck the American public school system, however, and it will probably take decades to fix it, along with the further encouragement of voucher systems which will increase the competition in the educational field and force teachers and administrators to teach real skillsets again rather than encouraging and promoting a viciously perverse "multiculturalism" which is really, in the end, reverse racism in disguise.
What parents of all races have wanted all along is neighborhood schools staffed by real, professional teachers who have no other agenda than to teach the original 3 Rs (stupidly redefined by liberal propagandists in recent years) to their kids to give them a fighting chance to prosper in an increasingly complex world. They don't really much care anymore about a school's racial composition. Rather, they are mightily concerned that their kids are getting the best education possible from the best teachers possible.
The Democrats and their friends on the left love to trumpet to the gullible media that such desires are "racist." The only racists left in this country are a tiny minority of morons who will never learn, and they are becoming an endangered species. Discrimination by race in the public schools is, in fact, no longer a viable concern. What is really a concern is the crappy educational experience in inner city schools, something that forced busing will never solve. The Supremes' ruling, for all its contentiousness, will begin to slowly steer us toward educational excellence once more by emphasizing education over social engineering.
Finally, it's become quite clear that a stealth attempt in congress by lefty Democrats and, astonishingly, by some Republicans like the oily and tone-deaf Trent Lott, to bring back the radio and TV "Fairness Doctrine" as a way of eliminating conservative talk radio has been quietly put to bed by an oddly nonpartisan consensus. Wonk has always said that whenever you hear the word "fairness" uttered by a Democrat, you should check your wallet. The effort here took a slightly different tack, defining "fairness" as a lack of opposition viewpoints.
Even the MSM now openly admits it's over 92-95% biased in favor of the leftist point of view. The only piece of the MSM even marginally controlled by conservatives consists of precisely the Fox News Channel and the Washington Times. It is in this vacuum that conservative talk radio has flourished, aided and abetted more recently by the rise of the right-wing blogosphere, who just combined to defeat the Amnesty Bill, for example. Reconstituting the old "Fairness Doctrine" would have put conservative talk radio and perhaps eventually conservative bloggers as well, right out of business, leaving the left 100% in control of the political message. That definition of "fairness" is a status quo they'd obviously support, too, since they are, paradoxically, closet fascists who, like more public fascists, want complete control of the media and no outlet for the opposition.
Such a situation might be fine for a Hugo Chavez or a Hosni Mubarek. But it's not going to float with the American people. Thus, the left's crude attempt at post-McCarthyite intimidation and repression has, at least for now, fallen flat.
It is eternally fascinating to Wonker that lefties are so bloody passionate about silencing their opponents rather than debating them. They like to call themselves "liberals." But more and more Americans are recognizing them for the fascistic Marxist propagandists they really are. And the lefties hate it, since they know they're intellectually superior to us all. How frustrating for them this week must have been. How irritating that "the people" have actually been heard and have forced these socialist elites to retreat.
Let's hope this continues, as the defeated left now turns its attention back to getting the U.S. humiliated in Iraq.
