Sixty-five-year-old Olympia Snowe, who could only be considered a \u201cRepublican\u201d in New England, recently announced she won\u2019t run for re-election to her seat in the U.S. Senate this year, cutting short a sadly abbreviated 39-year career in politics — 34 years as a member of Congress, which means she hasn\u2019t had to live under many of the laws she\u2019s helped enact since the middle of the Jimmy Carter administration.<\/p>\n
(Other than Rand Paul, who apparently declines to be \u201cwaved through\u201d as a matter of principle, when was the last time you heard of a congressman or senator being hassled about airport parking, or saw one being groped by the blue-gloved goons?)<\/p>\n
Why is Sen. Snowe pulling on her mukluks and hiking home? She complains there\u2019s too much hidebound ideology in Washington now, members are not as willing as they once were to reach across the aisle, voters are frustrated that their representatives are less willing to \u201ccompromise in order to get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why, the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, last month staged a seminar on the Las Vegas Strip, at which it posed to a panel including columnist Kathleen Parker, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Fox News\u2019s Juan Williams the question: \u201cIs moderation possible in American politics?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe implied consensus would seem to be: Probably not,\u201d responded Ms. Parker in a follow-up column. \u201cOr at least not without massive reforms and\/or a renaissance of civic duty. The hyper-partisanship we at least say we love to hate isn\u2019t likely to recede, given the rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem with all this talk about \u201cholding hands across the aisle,\u201d about the \u201cneed to compromise because voters just want Congress to get things done,\u201d of course, is where the compromising is taking place.<\/p>\n
The forces who promote a totalitarian collectivist state, no matter whether you choose to call them socialists or fascists or the reptilian conspiracy to enslave us all to Monsanto and Goldman-Sachs, are on our five yard line, about to clinch the game with a final score, and we\u2019re debating whether to let them spot the ball on the two, or wheher to risk being called \u201cmean-spirited\u201d if we point out that the four yard line looks more reasonable.<\/p>\n
At this point, if the goal of \u201ccompromise\u201d is to enable Congress to \u201cget things done,\u201d how would that help me?<\/p>\n
Congress has been \u201cgetting things done\u201d for 225 years. Except for getting rid of chattel slavery, which I\u2019m glad they did (though I wish they hadn\u2019t replaced it, a mere 47 years later, with income tax slavery, an \u201cimprovement\u201d which holds Big Massa can now seize and redistribute to the mendicant classes only about 40 percent of the value of the annual labor of every productive worker, investor, and entrepreneur, on pain of year-round imprisonment), and a few other measures which actually enhanced the liberties of individual men and women, I wish they\u2019d stopped \u201cgetting things done\u201d just before they stole the land of the civilized tribes and sent the Cherokee et al. on the Trail of Tears.<\/p>\n
The big problem is that the only excuse we have today for a Loyal Opposition is the pathetically compromised, unprincipled modern Republican Party. Democrats announce they want to grow the size of the federal government, its dystopian regulatory intrusiveness into our lives (see \u201cQuail Hollow Farm,\u201d) its appetite and tax bite, by some 9 percent per annum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWayyy too much!\u201d cries the GOP — including their new green-eyeshade hero of the hour, Paul Ryan. \u201cSurely 4.5 percent growth should be enough!\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, they compromise. So each year (until the last three or four, when its rate of growth came to resemble that of the plant in \u201cLittle Shop of Horrors\u201d), the federal government has grown \u201conly\u201d about 5 to 7 percent larger, more greedy, more avaricious, more tyrannical.<\/p>\n
What a great compromise! Why, at that rate, the federal government will consume every remaining scrap of our wealth and our liberty by, let\u2019s see, 5 to 7 percent compounded …<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time to stop playing defense in the other guy\u2019s Red Zone. Here\u2019s what I expect to hear from anyone who wants my vote for a seat in Congress:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal for my first year in Washington is to see half of the federal code repealed, and the size of the federal budget and payroll reduced by 50 percent, including the complete elimination of such unconstitutional agencies as Environmental Protection, Agriculture, Energy, Education, the firearms division of the BATFE, and the Federal Reserve, with the eventual goal over five to six years of paring the government down to about the footprint it filled in 1836, corrected for population.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you know what? I\u2019m a reasonable gal. I want an open dialogue; I\u2019m willing to compromise. So if any Democrat or big-government Demopublican wants to offer me something that in some other way will enhance my constituents\u2019 liberty, their freedom from government interference in their lives, in exchange for which they\u2019d like me to agree to the pathetic half-step of merely reducing the size of the federal government and its budget by 25 percent next year (and then, say, another 20 percent in each successive year), they\u2019ll find I\u2019m just as willing to \u2018reach across the aisle\u2019 as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you say, incumbent big-government Nannyfascists and Socialublicans? Ready to start compromising on the rate at which the ball should move toward the goalposts YOU\u2019RE defending?<\/p>\n
You\u2019re not going to dig in your heels and refuse to move an inch based on some hidebound leftist ideology, screeching that a reduction in the budget, power or regulatory authority of the federal government by a single iota would amount to the \u201cforcible starvation and murder of untold thousands of the innocent,\u201d admitting you were only interested in \u201ccompromise\u201d when it served to advance the ball toward OUR goalposts and a victory for YOUR side … are you?<\/p>\n
What kind of \u201ccompromise\u201d is that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sixty-five-year-old Olympia Snowe, who could only be considered a \u201cRepublican\u201d in New England, recently announced she won\u2019t run for re-election to her seat in the U.S. Senate this year, cutting short a sadly abbreviated 39-year career in politics — 34 years as a member of Congress, which means she hasn\u2019t had to live under many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-g5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}