RINOs

 

In her American Thinker essay “RINOs: The Scourge of the Republican Party,” Patricia McCarthy speaks for many:

How clueless are the swamp RINOs?  Very, very clueless.  So confident that they can dismiss President Trump like last week's news, a select few of them are hilariously destroying their own brands — as if the 75M+ people who voted for Trump are just going to forget Trump, the best president they've had in decades, and go their establishment way.  This scenario could be a sitcom; that is how comical people like Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, and Mike Pence are at this sad moment in time.  They all thought, perhaps still think, that by denigrating President Trump, they will win over those 75M people.  They thought that by blaming him for what happened at the Capitol on January 6, they would be rid of the man who so threatened their cushy, establishment lives. 

How can these lifelong pols be so deluded?  Because they live in a bubble of their own making.  They presume without thinking that they are smarter than "we the people."  Proceeding from that fixed belief, they have no doubt that they can mesmerize us to forget Trump and all the good he did, the promises he kept, the economy he built, the jobs he created, the energy independence he made possible, the control of the southern border he commenced, the wars he did not start, the rebuilding of the military after Obama, the sex-trafficking he interdicted, and much more.  The man was and is the best kind of warrior for America.

No wonder the left has hated and feared him with the "white hot intensity of a thousand suns" (h/t Cheers).  Donald Trump was and is their worst nightmare; he actually does care about "we the people."  That, for the leftists, is a deal-breaker; the "people" are nothing more than units of labor to the left.  They should not have a voice or a vote.  For all their touting of their concern for "the people," they have exactly none. 

. . .

We are experiencing tyranny by executive order, and most of the Republicans are sitting still for it when they should, as a group, be on the steps of the Capitol every day warning the American people about what is happening.

Read the full article here.

# # #

For or against gun control?

art credit: riversong.wordpress.com

Gun control is not one of the primary planks in the Tea Party platforms (those planks are limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets). However, Tea Party patriots may be interested in the gun control bills defeated yesterday in Congress. CNN reports:

Senators couldn't muster enough bipartisan support to pass a series of gun control measures Monday [yesterday], the latest in a long string of failed attempts at enacting tighter curbs on firearms in the United States.

Spurred by the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, senators from each party introduced the measures they said would have strengthened background checks and prevented suspected terrorists from obtaining weapons.

But tough election year politics, paired with disputes over the effectiveness of each party's ideas, proved too powerful to break the longstanding partisan gridlock that's surrounded gun issues for years.

The result was expected. A fifth option, set to be introduced and voted upon as early as Tuesday by moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins, has generated more optimism, but still faces long odds at passage.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who sponsored one of the failed measures expanding background checks, reacted angrily after his provision was defeated.

"I'm mortified by today's vote but I'm not surprised by it," Murphy said Monday evening. "The NRA has a vice-like grip on this place."

More of the report is here.

According to Sen. Murphy, the National Rifle Assoc. is once again the villain in the piece. Thomas Sowell published an excellent opinion piece at RealClearPolitics:

Surely murder is a serious subject, which ought to be examined seriously. Instead, it is almost always examined politically in the context of gun control controversies, with stock arguments on both sides that have remained the same for decades. And most of those arguments are irrelevant to the central question: Do tighter gun control laws reduce the murder rate?

That is not an esoteric question, nor one for which no empirical evidence is available. Think about it. We have 50 states, each with its own gun control laws, and many of those laws have gotten either tighter or looser over the years. There must be tons of data that could indicate whether murder rates went up or down when either of these things happened.

But have you ever heard any gun control advocate cite any such data? Tragically, gun control has become one of those fact-free issues that spawn outbursts of emotional rhetoric and mutual recriminations about the National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment.

If restrictions on gun ownership do reduce murders, we can repeal the Second Amendment, as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist to protect people. People do not exist to perpetuate laws.

But if tighter restrictions on gun ownership do not reduce murders, what is the point of tighter gun control laws -- and what is the point of demonizing the National Rifle Association?

There are data not only from our 50 states but also from other countries around the world. Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm's empirical study, "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," should be eye-opening for all those who want their eyes opened, however small that number of people might be.

Professor Malcolm's book also illustrates the difference between isolated, cherry-picked facts and relevant empirical evidence.

The rest of Sowell's article is here.

# # #