May 1, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Why the House GOP can’t agree & why they should keep Speaker Johnson
By Rick Manning
The constant battling between members of the House GOP Conference sometimes can seem like silly high school student body politics, but it isn’t and it is important to understand why the fight exists.
Generally speaking there are three distinct groups of Republicans in the House, and for that matter the Senate as well.
The first group believes that America is on a precipice of disaster which must be met head-on, right now, regardless of consequences. This group believes that the ship of state is on a river rapidly approaching a fatal waterfall and is desperately trying to convince their shipmates of the impending doom while trying to steer the boat toward a branch of the river that doesn’t go over the edge.
The second also believes that America is on a pathway that ends disastrously but by working toward gradual corrections, our nation will survive as it always has.
The third doesn’t see the doom at all. They seem to believe that no problem cannot be solved with more military spending and lower taxes. While aware of the concerns of both of the above groups, this cohort thinks that they are either simply over-reacting to events or in the case of the first group, dangerous alarmists who are rocking the boat by yelling waterfall when they don’t see it.
While the majority of the House Republican Conference are in the second and third groups, the first rightfully believes it is their duty to their sworn oath of office to do everything in their power to turn around the country before it is too late. This group is hard for the second and third to understand because they are willing to risk their political careers and the perks of Washington by using their limited power to do everything to stop the current destructive course.
Here is the problem.
The first group is right on all of their concerns about issues ranging from illegal immigration to cultural Marxist indoctrination in the schools to the almost impossible to fix annual deficit and the accompanying crushing national debt. They just don’t have the votes to pass fixes, even in the House.
So, they are growing increasingly frustrated that in spite of their warnings and efforts, the current one-vote House majority does not have the will to do whatever is necessary to make significant changes now.
The result of this urgency is that the first group withholds their votes from legislation which has fixes that can pass the House, as they are insufficient to do anything more than at best putting an undersized bandage on a gaping wound. This failure to support weak, short-term fixes, forces the Speaker, who doesn’t have the votes to sustain a government shutdown or other similar responses, to pass even weaker legislation to prevent getting run over altogether by the go-along/get along Republicans and the Democrats.
The passage of the Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan supplemental spending bill is a perfect example of this dynamic
Many GOP House members, for fiscal and national security reasons, opposed sending $60 billion to Ukraine, and had doubts about providing additional funds to Israel or Taiwan in light of our own nation’s dire fiscal situation, and the unwillingness of our President to defend our border even as he demanded billions to defend Ukraine’s.
For months, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) held the line against putting anything resembling President Joe Biden’s original $106 billion Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan supplemental spending bill to the floor.
Instead, he led the GOP to pass stand-alone legislation supporting Israel with cuts to the recently passed dramatic increase in Internal Revenue Service personnel targeted to pay for the needed help. But the Democrat Senate Majority Leader who pretends to support Israel rejected any Israel aid that was paid for by other budget cuts.
In response, Johnson led the House to pass stand-alone Israel aid funding without any accompanying budget cuts. This was also rejected by Schumer and Biden.
Then Iran attacked Israel, and the need for the additional money and military materiel for our Middle Eastern ally became a crisis.
Speaker Johnson also faced a vote crisis in the House as Democrats had filed something called a discharge petition, which if it attained a majority of signatures of House members, would bring the Biden $106 billion proposal to a vote on the floor without any amendments. Prior to the Iranian attack, Johnson was able to hold off the GOP’s defense wing from signing onto the petition, but afterward, the politics changed and they demanded action or else.
So, Johnson negotiated with the Democrats and came up with a bill that cut $12 billion from Biden’s original request which passed overwhelmingly.
It wasn’t a good bill by any stretch of the imagination, but it was made worse by the need for Johnson to get House Democrats to vote for it. The same Democrats who held leverage due to the threatened discharge petition putting the bad Biden bill on the floor.
The irony of this is that if those House Republicans who opposed the Ukraine aid had negotiated to yes on a much less perfect bill than they would have liked, the inclusion of billions of dollars of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which will undoubtedly fall into Hamas’ hands might have been stopped.
Now, Speaker Johnson faces a growing threat to his ability to retain the speakership. The most likely outcome of Johnson being ousted is the emergence of a Democrat/Republican power sharing House of Representatives.
This unforced error would negate the ability of the GOP to build a 2025 legislative agenda using their control over the House Committees would be lost.
Creating and building support for the big picture solutions the country needs which would have the votes to pass should Republicans increase their majority in the House, gain the majority in the Senate and Donald Trump be re-elected to the presidency is what rightfully frustrated conservative visionaries should demand.
It is my hope and prayer that conservatives in the House, those with whom Americans for Limited Government most closely share the recognition that our nation is in desperate trouble with a need for a significant change of direction, will resist the short-term urge to lash out at Johnson and instead focus upon laying the foundation for the needed changes in 2025.
America is on the brink, but big solutions can be achieved in eight months when a new Congress convenes with a new president.
It can be done, but only if those of us who see the need for that change have the discipline to focus on the prize rather than seeking visceral satisfaction in taking down a Speaker who is relatively powerless due to the circumstances of his ascension and the historically small majority he leads.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/05/why-the-house-gop-cant-agree-why-they-should-keep-speaker-johnson/
Erosion of Trust in the Institutional Left on Covid, Biden, and Immigration Could Spell the End of Leftism
By Manzanita Miller
Big government leftism has experienced a rapid erosion of public trust over the past four years due to three national calamities: Covid, Biden, and the border.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating has been alarmingly low for over twelve solid months and Americans say by a two to one margin Biden’s policies have personally hurt them, yet the Democratic Party refuses to entertain other options and continues to push for Biden’s nomination. This refusal to advise Biden to step aside and allow more capable alternatives to run has eroded trust in the Democratic party.
On top of that, the record-high number of illegal aliens streaming across the southern border has prompted a plurality of Americans to declare a border crisis and demand stricter border control. Positive sentiment for immigration is falling rapidly as more Americans begin to view the border crisis as a threat to the economy and national security.
Lastly, the institutional left’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which undermined freedom of association, deprived citizens of medical privacy, and put the nation into an economic coma from which it has yet to recover, is far from forgotten.
All three issues have deeply marred the brand of corporate leftism which has swallowed the Democratic Party and will have serious repercussions in years to come.
The draconian response in blue states and cities to the coronavirus deeply eroded public trust in centralized power, and has driven coalitions of former left-leaning groups away from Democrats.
Americans for Limited Government Foundation noted last year that the pandemic appears to have pushed parents of school age children toward the right politically due to school closures and mask and vaccine mandates pushed by leftists.
YouGov data from 2022 showed Covid restrictions pushed by Democrats drove parents of school age children toward former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and that trend has continued to accelerate.
We also have evidence that the pandemic substantially altered the political inclinations of young adults and has pushed large numbers of Gen Z voters toward the right.
Battleground state polling from the New York Times shows a double-digit decline in support for Biden among young voters. The Times poll found Biden winning a scarce 47% of the vote from 18–29-year-olds in November, a twenty-point decline compared to 2020.
Then there is the institutional left’s refusal to bench Biden and replace a clearly incompetent man with someone more politically and practically feasible. Despite attempts at launching a Democratic alternative with the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and widespread belief among the public that Biden is incapable of fulfilling his job as president, the Democratic Party refuses to shuttle Biden aside and unearth an alternative.
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who said he wouldn’t vote for Biden a week ago, recently tweeted on X that, “the biggest mistake Democrats have made is supporting @POTUS [Joe] Biden for a second term.” Ackman pointed out that by pushing Biden, Democrats gave Biden “false confidence” that he can win the election and dissuaded alternative Democratic contenders from emerging.
Mounting evidence shows a fracturing of the left, with Biden losing double-digit support among key coalitions of swing voters who supported him in 2020. Americans may have their concerns and reservations about Trump and “preserving democracy”, but by and large every recent public opinion poll shows a majority of Americans give Trump positive marks on important issues, including the economy and immigration.
A recent Siena College/ New York Times poll found Americans say by a two to one margin Biden’s policies have “personally hurt” them more than helped them, but the public say by a fifteen point margin that Trump’s policies have “personally helped”.
The same poll found swing voters strongly favor Trump’s governing, with women saying Trump’s policies “personally helped them” by a 17-point margin, Hispanics saying Trump’s policies helped them by a 15-point margin, and young people saying Trump’s policies personally helped them by a 6-point margin.
Lastly, the institutional left has been dismally wrong on pushing their destructive Open Borders policy, an agenda that could not be more out of step with the needs and opinions of American citizens.
Under Biden’s reckless Open Borders agenda, nine million illegals have entered the country through the U.S.-Mexico border, including 1.8+ million who escaped Border Patrol and are now roaming about without documentation.
A series of opinion polls since Biden’s border crisis became an inescapable threat to civil society show that the public is increasingly unwilling to accept the assault on the southern border.
A recent NPR / Marist poll finds that Americans have adopted an aggressive deportation mindset with regard to handling illegal immigrants, with the nation saying 51 percent to 48 percent that all illegals should be deported. This is a drastic change from just a few years ago and speaks to voters’ growing distrust of the institutional left’s Open Borders agenda.
Another NPR/Marist poll found the number one priority for the largest share of the American public – 41% – is increasing security along the southern border to prevent illegal border crossings.
The poll also found support for immigration as a whole has declined nine percentage-points since July 2021. 60 percent of U.S. adults give the Biden Administration poor marks on handling immigration. This sentiment is far from exclusive to Republicans – 66% of independents and 30% of Democrats as well as 90% of Republicans take issue with Biden’s Open Borders policy.
A mid-January Morning Consult poll also found that a growing number of Americans believe illegal immigration harms our economy, with Americans saying 64% to 25% that illegal immigration hurts the U.S. economy. This includes 42% of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020.
The institutional left was already on very shaky ground leading into the last two presidential election cycles, but after four years of the Biden regime and grave lapses in judgment on Covid and Open Borders, this particular brand of leftism has lost substantial credibility. No one is saying the public is fully rejecting all aspects of liberalism, but it is hard to argue that the draconian style of big-government leftism has not taken a substantial hit.
Manzanita Miller is an associate editor at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/05/erosion-of-trust-in-the-institutional-left-on-covid-biden-and-immigration-could-spell-the-end-of-leftism/