After November, What?

It seems that a Republican takeover of the House is already seen as a fait accompli with a similar result in the Senate a remote possibility.

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Most polls accept that given public anger over the nation’s struggling economy and President Obama’s manifest inability to do his job capably, the proposition is that the GOP will most probably take the House with a comfortable margin while a similar result in the Senate remains possible but probably unlikely. With the House firmly under their control for at least the next two years after January, Republicans will find themselves part of a divided federal government, with the legislative power – the ability to make laws and control the nation’s purse strings - largely in their hands even if they lack full control in the Senate. Given that probability it is essential the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill begin now to plan for a two year struggle with an executive branch they must understand remains in enemy hands and must be dealt with in those terms and those terms only.

Lethal temptation for bi-partisanship

Lurking in the wings, however, is a lethal temptation to which Republicans in the past have succumbed – the tendency to seek a spirit of bi-partisanship and all-around good fellowship with a party dedicated to their total destruction. I get tired of insisting that what really exists between the two major parties is a state of war in which the Democrats never forget that Republicans are intractable enemies while Republicans prance around brandishing an olive branch in a fruitless effort to be nice guys even when there’s a firing squad taking aim at them. At issue is the proposition that government, being all-wise, must rule absolutely and citizens, lacking the intellectual ability to know what is good for them, must obey the government’s dictates without question. The dominant left wing of the Democrat party views democracy as a system in which government must take control of just about every facet of civic life since the American people, who in their superior opinion they insist will wander aimlessly if not directed by the wisdom that exists only within the confines of their party’s upper echelons, must be led around with a Democrat ring in their noses. A Republican party that fails to go all-out in opposition to that enormous fallacy fails to fulfill its very raison d’etre. It does not exist to work hand-in-hand with the opposition – it exists in these days to protect the American people from a party wedded to he idea that anyone who disagrees with them is a decadent racist who wants to abolish Social Security, allow the “rich” to loot the treasury at will and probably re-institute slavery. Think of bi-partisanship as the concept that requires both sides of an issue to find some middle ground between their ideological positions. The fallacy here can be illustrated when one side pushes a bill to kill my mother. The bipartisan approach would require a compromise - perhaps one where instead of killing Mom would be merely to break her legs. The concept that some harm be done to my mother is accepted. The issue at hand becomes just how much harm?

In war there is no substitute for victory

Immediately following the November elections House and Senate Republicans should meet and hammer out their legislative goals for the new Congress. They should be prepared for a running start when the new Congress convenes. If they are in tandem with the majority of the America people, job one will be the immediate repeal of Obama’s ill-conceived health care reform laws before they can devastate the nation’s free-enterprise medical system. And they must understand that they are at war with a determined enemy and that their policy vis-à-vis the opposition should be based on Douglas MacArthur’s dictum – that in war there is no substitute for victory. Faugh a Ballagh