Like the good Marxists that they are, Democrats have a plan to take back the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and they have been working it diligently since Rep. Matt Gaetz first started threatening to oust former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy through a motion to vacate the Chair.
As Marxists, Democrats know how revolutions work and adhere to ironclad party discipline to achieve their goals. Republicans, on the other hand, think junior high school civics still govern American politics and they also find themselves hogtied by party divisions that stymie even the most basic efforts to achieve a coherent party brand to take advantage of their slim majority.
Everyone was surprised when Democrats joined eight principled conservatives to oust former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for failing to keep a variety of promises he made to the House Republican Conference to get himself elected Speaker in a contentious January vote.
And while the conservatives who ousted McCarthy lacked a plan for “what happens when we win,” Democrats knew that, with conservatives lacking a clear successor to McCarthy, out of McCarthy’s ouster would come chaos – a proven precursor to a successful Marxist revolution.
And, just as Lenin’s Russian Communist’s pursued a chaos strategy once the Tsar was overthrown and a proto-democracy was set-up in Russia, Democrats have done the same here.
While Democrats have remained united behind Biden’s policies of open borders, trillion-dollar deficits and expansion of the security state, disorganized Republicans have been unable to formulate a counterprogram.
The result has been that conservative Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has found himself in the bizarre situation of lacking the Republican votes to pursue ANY positive conservative agenda, while at the same time lacking the Republican votes to play effective defense against the united Democrats.
For example, in September in the lead-up to McCarthy’s ouster, a continuing resolution (CR) failed 198-232 after 21 Republicans voted with Democrats against it. The measure would have kept the government funded for 30 days while cutting funding by 30% for all agencies except the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. It also included H.R. 2, a Republican measure to codify Trump-era border policies.
Now, the idea of combining H.R. 2 with a CR has come back, advocated by some of the same interests that opposed ANY continuing resolution back in September.
Speaker Johnson’s spending deal with the Senate and Biden White House, which included a provision making good on his promise to pass spending bills through “regular order” is also now in tatters with Republican spending and border hawks objecting to the $1.6 trillion “topline” and even threatening another vote to vacate the chair if Johnson doesn’t back away from the deal.
To reinforce their point the anti-deal Republicans joined with Democrats to vote down yesterday’s Rule for debate on some unrelated bills. “It had nothing to do with the particular issues, but it has something to do with if we’re not going to fight for the most important thing in this country … to save our republic, which is stop the flow of immigration,” said our friend Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
“No border, No spending,” principled limited government constitutional conservative Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, another of the 13 “no” votes on the Rule, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Normally, if Andy Biggs and Ralph Norman were for or against something we’d be in lockstep with them, but here’s the problem: Are there more Republican votes for “No border, No spending,” than there are Democrat (plus RINO) votes against it?
We doubt that is the case. More importantly, is there a specific bill that accomplishes what the anti-deal Republicans want? So far, we haven’t seen it. And, if it is the idea of combining H.R. 2 with a CR, will the previous NO votes switch to YES?
We’re not afraid of government shutdowns or fighting the good fight and losing. Out of the Newt shutdown and defeats in the past, such as the battle to retain the Panama Canal, the conservative movement has grown.
The difference between those battles and today is that each had a goal that you could put on a bumper sticker and well-led, well organized inside and outside support advocating for an understandable outcome.
Today’s situation in the House looks nothing like that.
Indeed, it more closely resembles the situation of the 1917 Russian government of Alexander Kerensky blundering through the chaos created by the Bolsheviks that led to their successful October Revolution.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that if the elections for Congress were held today, 49% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican candidate, while 40% would vote for the Democrat.
But don’t count on those numbers holding. As the Marxist Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives well-understand, chaos is the friend of the revolutionary. To that end, look for the Democrats to soon adopt as their 2024 campaign slogan “End the chaos in the House, vote Democrat.”
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2004, he served as a staff member or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative political figures, including Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Jack Kemp. A member of American MENSA, he served on the House and Senate staff and on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle. Rasley is a graduate of Hanover College and studied international affairs at Oxford University’s Worcester College.