This past weekend I struggled with a very rare situation, so rare in fact that it threw me seriously off-balance, forcing me to take to my recliner with a double shot of bourbon until I could get my legs back under me.
I was wrong about something.
(I can hear my wife laugh at that, though she’s not read it yet. Even my Wonder Dog, lying at my feet as I write – as is her wont – just gave me a side-eye accompanied by a slight tilt of her head.)
I was wrong about the Speaker debates. Last week I wrote a column in which I referred to “the House speaker debacle,” and called it a “clown show.” I took that tack out of frustration by what seemed like another example of GOP incompetence.
When the Dems took over with a very slim margin in the House, they immediately got in lockstep, elected the mummified harridan (AIEEE! Kill her with fire!) to lead them, and got about the business of damaging our country, as quickly and efficiently as any other robotic socialists you may remember from your history books.
By contrast, when we get a small majority, we immediately fall to in-fighting, and the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) are only too happy to cheer and jeer from the sidelines.
That’s where I went wrong. Because I’ve found this general rule to be reliably true: any time the leftists are cheering something, that thing is bad for the country, and for conservatives.
But upon reflection, I think this time might be the exception that proves the rule. Because as far as I can tell, nothing bad came out of the multiple ballot exercise.
Sure, Congress was prevented from doing anything for the four days of negotiation. (As I said: nothing bad.)
But the concessions that the conservatives won at least move in the right direction:
- McCarthy agreed to hold separate votes on 12 different appropriations bills, rather than allowing them to be bundled into the disgusting joke that is one ginormous omnibus bill each year.
- He agreed to cap discretionary spending at the levels they were when Biden stumbled into office.
- He agreed to the subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” and to not using PAC money to mount primary challenges in safe House seats, along with a variety of other procedural changes that the conservatives wanted.
- He will appoint more House conservatives to various important committee positions.
- He also agreed to allow any single House member to start the process of attempting to remove a Speaker.
While that last step is a useful shot across the bow for McCarthy (reminding him that he can’t afford to cavalierly dismiss the concerns of the conservative wing of the party), it also potentially enables near-constant battles anytime any member disapproves of any move McCarthy makes,
But I’m cautiously optimistic that that won’t happen. First because it incentivizes McCarthy to avoid crossing conservatives on any major issues. And second, because it disincentivizes members from frivolously or repeatedly employing that tactic for personal, petty or unserious reasons.
No member’s career is going to be helped if he repeatedly forces votes to try to knock off the speaker, only to have the motion look like a stunt, as it gets lopsidedly voted down, over and over again.
Are these perfect concessions? They are decidedly not.
But the depressing reality is that the GOP has a slim majority in one house. It doesn’t matter who the speaker is — any conservative bills they pass will get shot down in the Senate or vetoed by Biden.
But having said that, the House can stop the Dems from passing any legislation, and they can take at least partial control of the national agenda, by investigating Dem malfeasance (from Hunter, to the border, to big tech collaboration with the feds, to Fauci’s misinfo on covid).
They can shed light on the damage that Biden has done and continues to do to the country, and thus provide ammunition for the eventual GOP presidential nominee to use in 2024.
In fact, I’m encouraged by McCarthy’s first few steps. He passed the bill to reverse the hiring of 87K more IRS agents, and he threw Pelosi’s strong-arm tactic back in the Dems’ face, by tossing three of the many lefty stooges (Omar, Swalwell, and Schiff) off of their previous committees.
And all of that, even though it’s far from perfect, was well worth a four-day fight in the House. So mea culpa.
Two other stories caught my eye this weekend, one grim and one hilarious.
The grim one was the Dems’ repulsive, almost unanimous opposition to the bill requiring that a child who is born alive after a botched abortion must be given medical care. That bill is almost unique in recent years, in that it is actually honestly named. (Unlike the “Affordable Health Care Act” that raises the cost of health care, or the “Inflation Reduction Act” that drastically increases inflation, etc.)
The bill is called The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Because it applies to those who were born alive, having survived an abortion attempt. And it protects them. Imagine that!
My own pro-life views aside, I think most of the country is somewhere in the middle – leaning at least slightly pro-life – on abortion. Most folks want exceptions for rape, incest and life-endangerment of the mother, and would allow the morning-after pill and early-term abortions, while supporting restrictions after week 15 or so.
On this issue, as on so many others, the national Democrat party is radically extreme. In little more than a generation, they’ve gone from a “safe, legal and rare” pro-choice stance, to a “shout your abortion” pro-abortion stance. Within the last year, every high-profile Dem has refused to say that s/he would EVER oppose any abortion, even up until the moment of birth.
This new bill sheds some much-needed light on the moral and scientific untenability of that position.
Realistically, this bill will likely not affect many newborns each year, since even the most incompetent and ham-handed abortionists are in a heartbreakingly unfair fight, and are not likely to lose that fight so badly that a defenseless baby can survive their violence. (Still, if it saves only one newborn….)
But that’s beside the point, which is that the bill reveals a crucial reality. Once a baby (or “tissue mass,” or “product of conception”) is physically outside of the mother’s (sorry, the “birthing person’s”) body, it is obviously no longer “the mother’s body.” (I know: it had a separate heartbeat, brainwaves and DNA, so it never was.)
Even the most dimwitted and fanatical abortion supporter can see and understand that. And yet only one House Democrat voted to provide medical treatment for a baby once it has been completely, undeniably, born.
If we can bring this truth before the American people, and the Democrats don’t pay a price for this vote, our country is in worse shape than I think it is.
Let’s end on a happier note, shall we?
Remember when Trump had some documents which had once been classified, and he took them to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House? And remember how as the president he had the uncontested constitutional power to declassify them, and how there was no evidence that he had ever passed any of them on to any other country anyway?
And remember how Biden, the national Democrats and the MSM all blustered and bloviated, and got their gender non-binary one-sies tugged up over their heads in outrage at what a reckless and treasonous thing it was for any president to keep such documents outside of highly secure government custody and control?
I know you do, and that you know where I’m going:
Because God exists, and He loves us, and He’s still in the “reap what ye sow” bidness, He is in the process of serving up a deluge of sweet, sweet karma raining down on Joey Gaffe’s empty, liver-spotted head.
First it turns out that Biden had left some classified documents in a U Penn office that he hasn’t been to in four years. Then it turns out that he also left some secret docs in a room in his Delaware home. Then it turns out that he also left some in a locked garage in that same house.
So far, the best defense the Cadaver in Chief has been able to come up with is to say, “By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, OK?”
Ummm, no. That’s not okay. We don’t care where your Corvette is. Foreign nations are not trying to get into your garage and steal your Corvette.
Fang Fang didn’t put up with the smell and the low IQ while banging Eric Swalwell just to pick up some pillow talk about where you keep your ‘Vette, you hypocritical old coot!
The story is only a few days old, but it’s already more entertaining than a Liz Warren tale of that time when she led a raiding party on some white settlers, astride the Palomino she named “Lenin.” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
High profile Dems have been spinning for all they’re worth. Congress-imbecile Hank Johnson, who once worried openly about the chance that Guam might capsize if too many people occupied our military base on one end of that island (I swear I’m not making that up), suggested that the Biden docs may have been “planted.”
The defective-noggin crew at the View said the same. Schumer and MSM talking heads on every little-watched channel have been touting reasons why Trump’s confidential docs were very different and much worse than Biden’s.
Meanwhile, KJP – she vacations on the island of Lesbos, so any criticism of her is invalid – is sweating like a Que Mala in church, and melting down into stammering incoherence.
Break out the popcorn, because watching these virtue-signaling hypocrites squirming and spinning is going to be fun!
Fetterman/ Hank “Guam is Sinking!” Johnson 2024!
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Martin Simpson 
I thought at the time you missed the point by a couple of parasangs, but refrained from saying so, because I’m kind, and because I was still dealing with post-holiday charitable feelings. What you were seeing – what we were all seeing – was something we have come to see all too rarely in this country: democracy in action. The democrats don’t go in for that, you’re quite right: they do lockstep, not democracy.
Democracy is often messy, often sloppy, and occasionally noisy to the outside observer. It looks anything but neat, or organized. Though it’s better than it was. The boys and girls in the chamber haven’t flung rotting fruit at each other in years, and it’s been a long time since anyone was punched in the mouth, and an even longer time since anyone was horsewhipped on the Capitol steps. (Though that could be a custom in need of revival, deservedly, for Swalwell and Schiff.)
But there was nothing untoward or impure about those days: it was democracy in action and it was quite a pure exercise thereof. Indeed, it was an almost exhilarating sort of an exercise, as you had a small group of people who actually believe in something, quite strongly, making themselves known to the “go along to get along” crowd, of which Kevin McCarthy has been Head Boy. Perhaps now he might be less inclined to be so, which can only be good.
I enjoyed it. I thought it was great. I think it’s something of which we need to see a lot more.
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