“Everything’s fine,” smiled Captain Paul Ryan smarmily as he steered the Titanic into an iceberg. “Now, let me get back to shafting our own voting base via my incomprehensible determination to cancel the tax deductions that Republicans use instead of cutting handouts to Democrat-voting freeloaders!”
We are sailing toward disaster in 2018 and no one seems to want to acknowledge it. Let’s look at the facts and evidence.
Data Point One: We scraped by in a couple of House special elections so far, including Punchy McSlugahack’s in Montana, but that Daily Kos reader-funded-12-year old non-resident Democrat dork is going to beat the charisma-free Republican in the Georgia 6 race next week. Our enemy is motivated and smells blood.
Data Point Two: Because she is a droning non-performer, Theresa May took a 24 point advantage and turned it into a loss in Britain.
Data Point Three: Our GOP Republican legislators are droning non-performers who have a 10 point disadvantage going into 2018.
The bottom line is that despite the GOP’s advantages in incumbency, money, and (to a much smaller extent than the lying liberals say) redistricting, we have a very real chance of losing the House and maybe even the Senate in 2018. The Senate would be hard to lose based simply on number of seats in play, but we should have confidence in our party’s unique ability to screw-up and fail based on its unblemished track record of screwing up and failing.
Midterms traditionally go badly for the party holding the White House; it doesn’t help that Paul Ryan seems to be the Speaker of a House of Representatives on a different planet. He wanders about with this obnoxious, Comey-esque sanctimony vibe that demoralizes the base and ensures that we will stay home in large numbers while the pinkos turn out en masse. Mitch McConnell is a little better; he’s at least cunning and does what he can in a job that involves not just herding cats, but herding senile, narcissistic, and stupid cats.
“But stuff is getting done!” the GOP leadership insists, which might be true but is definitely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if “stuff is getting done” if your voters don’t know it and support you. Now, when Paul Ryan talks directly to us on Hugh Hewitt's show or elsewhere, he actually makes sense. He explains his strategy, so we can sigh “Oh, there’s a reason for all this and a coherent plan. Phew.” But then Ryan says something unbelievably stupid along the lines of, “As Speaker, my job is to pass legislation, not to go out and sell our agenda to voters.” No, that’s a steaming pile of Harry Reid.
The Speaker has multiple jobs, but they all boil down to winning. The Speaker’s job is not simply to be some goofy legislative super wonk. He needs to lead, which means getting us onboard as well as his caucus. And that means making sure we voters know what’s happening, why, and how it helps us. Yet the GOP fails to do that.
Stop failing. Start doing what we sent you to do and letting us in on the plan. Let us see you are intent on winning and you’ll start to rebuild the confidence your incompetence has shattered.
Here’s a good idea for a first step – work as hard as we do. Let’s see some late-night sessions. Let’s see some five day work weeks – and even some working on weekends. We work weekends. I work weekends. I’m writing this on a weekend. Why not you?
And let’s see you cancel the August recess. Work. We keep hearing about how you “don’t have time” to do your jobs, but then you propose to vanish in August? Hey, how about staying around that sticky, sweaty swamp of a city through August and getting your job done? I’m going to be working in August. Everyone else I know is going to be working in August. You bums need to work during August too.
And no, you don’t need to “come home to touch base with your voters.” We don’t want to see you here. We want to see you back in D.C., enacting the agenda we elected you to enact instead of chillin’ out at your crib and attending town halls filled with paid leftist shills where you tell us that you don’t have time to do what you’re being paid to do.
You must get the President’s agenda passed, but, at the same time, you must keep us in the loop. See, we don’t trust you. You haven’t earned our trust. We know you hate the idea that we are going to hold you accountable for what you do and fail to do and you don’t like it. Too bad. Because now we’re watching, so you better communicate with us to explain what we see and why it’s not surrender or failure. As the hep kidz say, we’re woke.
The enemy is motivated and energized, but right now, we’re “Meh.” The only way we will become un-meh is via results, and results aren’t merely passing legislation. “Results” means “a tangible improvement in our lives.” Because the situation out here is getting worse. Our country faces the terrifyingly real chance of falling apart if you fail – during the few minutes a day when you are not busy enacting the President’s agenda you should be reading my new novel about what might happen to our country if you keep failing.
So stop wasting time and effort cavorting with the Democrats about their fake Trump/Russia obsession. Those crusty senators with their “We must uncover the truth about these questions” nonsense need to stop. We all know the truth. It’s all a liberal lie.
Cut our taxes, like the GOP promised.
Rebuild our military, like the GOP promised.
Fix infrastructure (wisely), like the GOP promised.
Build a wall, like the GOP promised.
Kill Obamacare, like the GOP promised.
Oh, and how about recruiting some decent GOP candidates? Karen Handel seems like a nice lady, but she's lousy at politics so she never should have gotten in the race. Her upcoming loss is going to motivate our enemies, and we can't have that. We don’t have the luxury of letting nice people who are crummy candidates be our nominees. We need winners, not losers.
Put that nomination down! Nominations are for closers.
The Democrats are out there recruiting military vets – there’s one jerky liberal everyone finds annoying in every big unit, and that’s who they pick. They’ll preen and pose and get elected and then salute General Pelosi and vote as ordered on every item of Democrat soldier-shafting liberal hackery. That’s the threat – are you ready for it? You need to spend some time and effort on candidate selection and grooming; you need to make sure that in every district our money is on a winner. Are you doing that? Who is doing that? Why do none of us know about how you are doing that?
What we have here is a failure to communicate, which leads to a failure to win.
And we need to stop jamming our own voters in the name of some arbitrary, D.C. think tank g-generated conception of good policy. Good policy is what wins. How about not imposing anything upon us that hurts the GOP base? You see, you're there to represent Republicans. Some goofs and wusscons have the idea that you're there to represent all voters, but that's nonsense.
You are there to represent the people who voted for you, not the liberal whiners and welfare cheats who didn't and who hate you and us. So we're not going to close off deductions that help Republicans and we're not going to increase taxes on Republicans and we're not gonna do other things that hurt Republicans. We're going to hurt Democrats.
That's called politics. Try it. It’s amazingly effective.
If you do, we win. If the economy is cranking in November 2018 and health insurance premiums are under control – and they will be if you keep your promises – then you’re fine. Otherwise, you’re gone. People here – like in Britain – will vote against you just because you are the status quo if they feel the status quo stinks. So stop the stinking.
Start by announcing that you are staying in session through your (undeserved) August vacation, then deliver on your promises. Nothing else matters. Stop procrastinating. Stop chasing Putin squirrels like suckers. Choose to win.
The iceberg is right ahead – don’t slam into it.