Republicans in Congress Betray The Tea Party & GOP Principles

We, in the heartland have long lamented that the GOP's "elite leadership" in Washington are clueless imbeciles, who regularly "go along to get along."  But as they say, the proof is in the pudding.  Very nearly all the current membership of Congress has spent the vast majority of their political careers as a minority party in either their state house, or in Congress.

Once upon a time, the GOP stood for things like keeping down taxation, regulation and the reducing the size of blouted federal government.  But  like all things political, GOP politicians who said they were for this, were only paying lip-service for the masses. Most recently, GOP opposition to ObamaCare was that it was beyond the purview of the federal government both in the Commerce Clause as well as the 10th amendment, which limits the scope of the federal government.  Then came politics...

Among other things, S.197 sets a statute of limitations for claims, caps damages and creates standards for expert witnesses. These may sound like great ideas, but they are not within the constitutional powers granted to the federal government for the very same reasons Obamacare is not.

The law’s own justification for its constitutional authority should be chilling to anyone committed to limited federal power. The bill’s findings state that health care and health insurance are industries that “affect interstate commerce,” and conclude that Congress therefore has Commerce Clause power to regulate them — even when it involves an in-state transaction between a doctor and patient, governed by in-state medical malpractice laws. Is there any industry that couldn’t be found to have an effect on interstate commerce? The agriculture and manufacturing industries, long considered the paradigmatic areas not covered by the Commerce Clause, certainly fall under federal power under this broad analysis.

Now, the Senate GOP is for big government, because it's something that they want...for political jockeying. So, which is it? They have no principles that matter, and should adhere to, or they're just political hacks who say one thing one day, and something diametrically opposite the other? This is hypocrisy that is often laid at the feet of Congressional [Social] Democats...and a bat that should be used to beat the GOP political leadership.

No wonder Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves at the close of last week, an advance copy of this article in his hand, to say in essence -- and sadly -- that he was coming to the conclusion that in fact there were a number of Republicans who were on the other side -- as in those who once supported the conservative argument having jumped the fence to play in some fashion for Clark Clifford's old team

Making them, as we will call them here, "Clark Clifford Republicans."

"Clark Clifford Republicans" defined as those who really don't believe in the Reagan/Coolidge view -- the conservative view and once upon a time the Republican view -- of the world at all. Even if they give good lip service to the idea in public, it is clear from this piece that in the quiet corners of this or that Washington bistro they are muttering their equivalent derogations for Tea Partiers that match in some fashion Clifford's "amiable dunce" derisive. Although, it appears, they have dropped the "amiable."

It's not simply that they have a Thomas E. Dewey/Nelson Rockefeller view of the world or, to use Barry Goldwater's pithy description, they favor a "dime store New Deal."

The real problem here is that all of Clark Clifford's friends across the decades have so rooted Big Government in the psychology of Washington that "Republican Elites" have elected to accept the whole premise -- and for reasons having to do with self-preservation simply cannot bring themselves to get seriously Reaganesque or Coolidge-like because to do so gnaws at their own economic vitals and capacity for influence. Both now hopelessly entangled with the concrete boxes of bureaucracy that literally litter the Washington landscape. [Emphasis is mine, Ed.]

This is a bad bill and should never have been written this way.  You can't scream about a massive government over-reach in one minute...then try and extend the reach of government in another.  This is what DEMOCRATS DO...and is a gross betrayal of core principles of the Republican Party.