They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the presidency — and nothing’s happening. Nothing, that is, that Donald Trump doesn’t do by himself (i. e. reversing Obama’s executive orders and cutting regulations in general, reviving American global power, etc.).
The Republicans in the legislature are a disgrace. They can’t get it together to compromise on anything and move forward — no tax reform, no healthcare, no nothing. They are overwhelmed by a combination of overweening ego and rigid ideology — a lethal cocktail. What their behavior is doing is creating an inevitable situation where they lose control of Congress and ultimately the White House to the Democrats, when they had everything handed to them. Evidently, the Republicans can’t stand prosperity. Or maybe they really are the Stupid Party.
At the same time, the Evil Party today is worse than it ever was, an amalgamation of aging Marxist professors, snowflake Social Justice Warriors with an allergy to free speech, thugs in Guy Fawkes masks who smash windows and pick fights with just about anybody for no discernible reason, leftover identity politics exploitation hacks like Maxine Waters and equally leftover feminists, and, oh, yes, some rich Hollywood and media types who love to virtue signal their love for the common people while cavorting on a superyacht in Polynesia — not to mention lying or moronic (you pick) politicians who still insist on claiming Trump is in collusion with Vladimir Putin! Do we seriously want to give control back to them?
That would indeed be moronic, but complicating matters, exacerbating the problem for the Republicans of all stripes, is that they are out of touch with their voters. The rank-and-file are far more pragmatic than they are. Those voters live in the non-D.C. real world where practically every sane person realizes the perfect is the enemy of the good. More that that, most grownups realize there is no perfect (outside of baseball pitching and maybe a couple of paintings by Vermeer). Running around trying to achieve it is fruitless. What you want to do is make progress — and, obviously, not in the “progressive” sense, which is a ticket to national slavery. But that’s what the congressional Republicans are courting by their intransigent behavior — almost every one of them on all sides.
So my advice is this — Easter’s over. Do something! Now!
More specifically, face the following realities. Don’t expect healthcare to be anywhere near perfect, ever. There will always be a supply and demand problem for the foreseeable future, no matter how it’s formulated. Just try to make it better, see what happens, and then try to make it better again. Rome, as the cliché of clichés goes, wasn’t built in a day. And even if you get what you think is perfect, I promise you it’s not. So talk to each other and make an agreement, but be mindful of the following…
Tax reform is far more important than healthcare reform anyway. Meaning: if you get the economy humming, if you get people back to work with good, well-paying jobs, Americans will be able to afford healthcare (and a lot of other things) more easily, no matter how it’s presented. If you don’t, they’re going to have a problem, again no matter what plan is in place. (NOTE TO BERNIE: That includes socialized medicine with its myriad inefficiencies, including the rich running around the system to get care the others can’t afford.)
Furthermore, my dear Congresspeople, the stock market is treading water, waiting for you to reform taxes. If you don’t, it’s going to go down from its recent boom, possibly severely. And roughly fifty percent of Americans own stock, mostly for their retirement. Given our aging population, dithering here could lead to disaster for your fellow citizens down the line, not just the retirees. But if you help create and extend a boom market, you promote a good thing ultimately for the vast majority of our people. They will be able to buy homes, educate their children, and travel across whatever few parts of the globe are still safe. (Okay, it’s shrinking.)
Above all, tax reform is urgent, especially for the middle class and for corporations whose ridiculously high rates encourage billions of dollars to be stashed abroad that, as you well know, could be used here in the USA for so many purposes.
So, my fellow Republicans, those in Congress especially, stop being selfish, stop being egotistical, stop being excessively affixed to one ideology or another and get back to work!
And, by the way, I do appreciate ideology and have my preferences too, but as you may have noticed, the world is in an extremely dangerous place at the moment. The Middle East, as usual, is in a state of perpetual war and not getting any better, but the true madness now is of the nuclear kind, coming from North Korea. The crazy NORKS must be dealt with for the safety of millions of human beings in several countries, including our own. No one’s an isolationist anymore, unless they want to spend the rest of their life in a fallout shelter. Stop wasting our president’s and everybody else’s time with what is — believe it or not — the small stuff. Pass the legislation and move on. Your fellow Americans will be grateful.
(You will note that I have not mentioned by name any of the various factions in the Republican Party. That’s for a simple reason. In this case, they’re all to blame. Shame on them.)
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. Follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.
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