The other day a friend asked me why no Democrats ever become the kind of back-stabbing weasels that the GOP seems to crank out in factories or assembly lines somewhere in Utah or Wyoming?
It got me to thinking about this classic 1947 poem by Christina Rossetti:
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
That came to mind as yet another alleged Republican jumped ship... this time in my state of Texas: Matthew Dowd—who served as a “strategist” in the successful 2004 re-election campaign of President George W. Bush—now seeks to become Lieutenant Governor of the Lone Star State (www.DowdTexas.com) by taking on wildly popular incumbent Dan Patrick.. . whom Dowd calls “cruel and craven,” charging that Patrick “does not believe in the common good.” (If by “common good” Dowd means repealing the historic Texas Heartbeat Bill or scrapping our recently-enacted voter integrity safeguards or confiscating firearms, he’s 100% right: Dan Patrick stands firmly against all such dumb ideas.)
Dowd’s coming-out party as a Democrat, fittingly, took place on the MSNBC yakathon of another “former Republican” and turncoat from the same Bush-Cheney White House, the insufferable Nicolle Wallace… whose smarmy asides and sarcasm-laced “commentary” make MSNBC nighttime host Joy Reid seem like Margaret Thatcher by comparison.
Dowd and Wallace—along with comedy punchlines David French, Evan McMullin and Joe Walsh, whose combined campaigns for President of the United States yielded fewer votes than the number of business cards people drop in the fishbowl trying to win a free lunch at Panera Bread—join a long list of GOP turncoats stabbing (a) the Republican Party in general and (b) Donald J. Trump in particular.
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Space limitations preclude me from listing the entire Rogue’s Gallery, but it includes such bottom-feeder office holders as Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as well as former GOP Lt. Governor of Maryland Michael Steele—another “conservative” now on the payroll of MSNBC tapped for daily Trump-bashing—and outgoing RINO congressman from Ohio Anthony Gonzalez, who whines that the GOP has become “toxic” and who pledges that “Most of my energy” will be devoted to ensuring that Trump does not become President again.
But while the Benedict Arnold Party Bus is overloaded with marginally-Republican officeholders (Mitt Romney springs to mind, along with Ben Sasse and Lisa Murkowski) and bitter, formerly-relevant types like Kelly Ayotte, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes and—who could forget—Pete Wehner, the Omarosa Manigault Newman of speechwriters…there strangely are no takers tor the companion bus for “former” Democrats.
In fact, few—if any—registered Democrats ever turn on their political comrades..no matter how far to the left they lurch or how many additional taxes and dopey new government entitlements the Biden/Pelosi team dreams up. This past week, for example, exactly zero Democrats voiced any concern whatsoever that their party is fast-tracking America into the linear equivalent of that convertible with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon flying over the cliff at the end of the film Thelma & Louise. Spoiler alert: that was my favorite part of the movie.
I imagine that rather than agonizing over the obscene debt they are about to heap on their great-great-great grandchildren who will never be able pay off the bills coming due from their irresponsible and—yes—criminal waste of the taxpayers money…Democrats weigh the cost/benefit analysis and figure they’ll personally be okay.
“But Tom, what about Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema?” you ask. “Aren’t they standing in the gap to protect the American taxpayers?” Google the phrase “Bread & Circuses” and you will see—down through history—the antecedents of the Manchins and Sinemas have always served to calm the rubes with pitchforks and torches. In the end, both will cave. Why? They’re not really “principled.” They’re Democrats.
One day after he avoided September’s recall effort, California’s Democrat governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation—hold onto your girdle, Myrtle—that bans single-family residential zoning in California. The alleged reason was to address the “housing crisis” in his state, but it actually is the vanguard of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better Apartments” blueprint..coming to a neighborhood near you (as I seem to recall the guy with those “mean Tweets” warning voters prior to the 2020 election.) Response from Democrats? Crickets.
Lumber costs are 27% higher this month than in August. Prices at the gas pump are enough to give motorists a stroke. All over the U.S., businesses are responding to Joe Biden’s insane vaccine mandates by firing employees who resist..including loading dock workers, school bus drivers, and Registered Nurses. President Biden’s nutty answer? We’ll have the National Guard cover for those jobs. (Earth to Joe: has it occurred to you that taking all those Guardsmen away from their real jobs will slash productivity and profits for their own employers? The response from Democrats to all of this? Crickets.
It’s almost as if Democrats know that if they just keep their mouths shut and robotically do what Biden and Pelosi order them to do, even if a few of them get bounced in next year’s Midterms they’ll all be in line for cushy jobs in the Administration or—better yet—in the media. They can join such stalwart “journalists” as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and MSNBC’S Lawrence O’Donnell..who parlayed his former job as a minor helper in the U.S. Senate into a nifty-if-low-rated TV career.
Still, with 224 Democrats in the U.S. House (okay, 220 real ones and four of those participation-medal “delegates” from places like Guam and American Samoa) you’d think at least ONE OR TWO would stand up on their hind legs and say “This may cost me my future seat on the Amazon board of directors or get me banned from the Aspen Institute Ideas Conference but I simply cannot vote to saddle untold future generations with this savage, uncontrolled debt.”
But they won’t. The iambic pentameter may be a little off, but the same poem still works:
Who has seen a Democrat with a spine?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The Dems are passing by.
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