Maverick Jones

 

            Walter Jones, our Perquimans County NC representative in the U.S. Congress, rarely makes headlines— except when he is out to prove that he is a maverick with unconventional ideas. Some of them have been strange, if not downright nutty, like the time he pushed for a memorial to dogs on the National Mall. Or the time he proposed that the French fries in the congressional cafeteria be renamed Freedom fries in protest of France’s support of the Iraq War.

            As a member of the libertarian Liberty Caucus, Jones has consistently earned some of the lowest ratings from the American Conservative Union. In fact, he is one of the very few Congressmen to be stripped of a major committee assignment for defying party leadership.

            Here are three recent examples: he bucked Republican Party policy on minimum wage; he demanded that President Trump release his tax returns; and he refused to support the House health care bill. Now he’s at it again by becoming the first Republican lawmaker to call for the removal of Kevin Nunes from the House Intelligence Committee. Enough! Nunes is a patriot and the key to getting to the bottom of the Trump-Russia connection and the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump’s transition team. Nunes needs to be allowed to do his job—without backbiting from Democrats, the Trump-hating media, and disloyal Republicans.   

            Walter Jones does not reflect the views of his Republican constituents. A former Democrat, he has repeatedly been invited by Democrats to re-cross the aisle. Judging by his positions on key issues, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. If he remains a Republican, I hope a good candidate will come forward to oppose him in the 2018 primaries. It is time for this maverick to vacate his seat and enjoy retirement playing with his dogs and eating Freedom fries.

Crossroads

            President Trump’s budget is going nowhere; it will not survive the slings and arrows of Congress. It is instructive, however, in spelling out the President’s view of the role of the executive branch of the federal government. First and foremost is the protection of the citizens of this country. Hence, his proposed increases for defense, homeland security, and veterans’ affairs.

            Conversely, he sees a diminished role for federal agencies in areas best managed at the state and local levels. The budget's prime target is the EPA, which has issued thousands of regulations in the last eight years governing everything from smokestacks to puddles. 

             In short, President Trump’s budget is a rejection of the socialist ideology that prefers all decision-making to be in the hands of the government rather than with the citizens directly affected by those decisions. It reflects the conservative principle that, except for national defense, the government should not be doing for people what they could be doing for themselves.

            There is not much point in discussing individual line items in the budget, because Republican legislators will gut proposals that defund their pet projects, while the Democrats will instinctively reject outright any ideas put forth by a president they despise. What will remain at the end of this fruitless exercise is the question American voters will have to answer: Is the President taking us in the right direction?

            A parallel proposal is about to be placed before Congress: Repeal and Replace ObamaCare.  After all the haggling between moderate and conservative Republicans, a bill will be voted on by the full House. Most Republicans will vote for it, if only to deliver on their campaign promise. But if enough mavericks in the Senate vote No, it will die, and Americans will blame everybody for subjecting them to another year of the ObamaCare monstrosity.

            If Repeal and Replace fails, tax reform most likely will fail also. Maybe the only survivor will be a trillion-dollar infrastructure spending bill, because legislators love to spend money. To hell with the debt. And if you think this will put President Trump and Congress in a mood to begin a necessary reform of entitlements, guess again.

            We are at a crossroad. What happens in the next few months will decide the fundamental direction of this country. Nothing less.

No Equivalence

            A reader reacted to my recent post on the obstructionism of Congressional Democrats with this question: “Wasn’t GOP obstruction what happened for the last eight years with Obama?”  Here is my response.

            First, the Republican Senate did not prevent Obama from installing his Cabinet with the kind of obstruction and delaying tactics we’ve seen from the Democrats since the election. Second, the opposition from Republican supporters was never marked by the kind of violence we see today among protesters. Third, when Obama enjoyed a 60-vote majority in the Senate during his first two years in office, he was able to put through legislation like ObamaCare, while Republicans were powerless to prevent it. Fourth, as much as Republicans opposed Obama’s policies in Congress, their own proposals were repeatedly thwarted by Harry Reed; today’s Congressional Democrats obstruct, but offer no proposals of their own. Fifth, when Obama was frustrated by a failure of Congress to pass legislation he favored, he turned to executive orders, many of which were unconstitutional and got reversed by the courts.

             Equivalence? Hardly.

The Party of Hate

            The behavior of Democrats and their leftist cohorts in the media is positively disgusting, if not outright unpatriotic.  It goes beyond hostility to President Trump and his administration.  The “Party of Love” has clearly morphed from the party of sore losers to the “Party of Hate.” Evidence is mounting.

            Since Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer have done everything they can to prevent the president from confirming his cabinet picks.  Except for a few moderates like Senator Manchin of West Virginia, they have been unified in their opposition to every action taken and every proposal put forth by the Administration.  They vow not to cooperate with Congressional Republicans in reforming health care, taxes, and immigration.  “Resist” is now their battle cry, obstruction their weapon of choice.

            I have never been a big fan of the oafish and thin-skinned man now occupying the Oval Office, and I don’t agree with all his policies. But he is my president, and I support his efforts to improve our economy, our security, and our standing in the world. Constructive criticism is healthy, but the opposition has been obdurately uncompromising. Rather, it is bent on destroying the object of its hatred.

            How unfortunate it is that the Left now promotes unhinged attacks on the freedom of speech at town hall meetings and centers of independent thinking like Berkley. It is hard for me to accept that our First Amendment protects flag-burning amid posters accusing the president of being a sexist, a racist, and a homophobe, not to mention a Nazi, a Fascist, and a member of the KKK. We should not be surprised when young anarchists take their cue from members of Congress who baselessly call for the president’s impeachment or who debase their office by shamelessly referring to his Cabinet as scumbags.

            Democrats owe the office of the presidency a modicum of courtesy, if not for their own self-respect, at least for the people of this nation who value common decency.

           

Trump Gold

            I had an interesting guest at my home this past week, a niece I hadn’t seen in over 15 years. She lives in California now and is defined by it. She loves California living, even as she bemoans the high taxes, the cost of housing, and the homeless who can’t afford either. Like so many of her neighbors, she loved Obama, voted for Hillary, and hates Trump. In her opinion, the President’s relations with Russia are treasonous, even though she can’t support her position with facts.

            Actually, her antipathy for Donald Trump dates back several years when she was working in New York and met with him in Trump Towers on two separate occasions. She told me how she had been repulsed by the opulence of his residence, to the point of even refusing to use the gold toilet in the powder room. A spunky young woman, she must have impressed Mr. Trump, because he offered her a job. She turned him down.

            Now we have retired Vice-Admiral Robert Harward refusing President Trump’s offer to replace the disgraced Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. The reason for the turndown, according to the buzz on the street, is that he was told he couldn’t pick his own staff. That doesn’t sound like the Donald Trump who has insisted repeatedly that his picks for top jobs would have a great deal of independence in running their departments. Was the President being insincere when he made those assurances, or is someone else in his entourage calling the shots?

            I voted for Trump and I support most of his policies. But I worry that he is not showing strong leadership in resolving the impasse on taxes and health care, and I fear that his lack of experience in foreign affairs may not provide an effective response to North Korean, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian provocations.          

            Among President Trump’s best qualities is his ability to surround himself with great people. The events of the past week have begun to cast doubt on that ability. But there’s hope that they were nothing more than a hiccup.

            There’s also hope in California: my niece has announced she is moving to Nevada.

           

             

What Manners?

            I grew up in a family that placed a value on good manners. As a boy, I was taught to keep my elbows off the dinner table, to take my hat off in a restaurant, to hold the door open for a lady, and never to curse. But there was more: we were taught that respect and civility were marks of a cultured people. Class, my dad insisted, was not defined so much by knowing the difference between a salad fork and a pitchfork, but more by courtesy, kindness, and modesty.

            It would appear that many people never learned, or have conveniently forgotten, basic lessons in proper behavior in a civilized society. Or maybe they were taught different lessons. Where, we might ask, did the women marchers in Washington learn to wear hats suggestive of a vagina? Who taught the hysterical mobs that shouting “Nazi” and “Fascist” at Trump supporters and pasting four-letter words on their placards are acceptable forms of expression? Who said that students encouraging black-clad and masked thugs to break windows, trash cars, and light fires is a sanctioned form of protest?

            Of course, President Trump’s intemperate tweets are no model of decorum, nor are Senate Democrats’ despicable assaults on the character of presidential appointees. Elsewhere, Steve Bannon was certainly being uncivil when he told the media to “Just keep your mouths shut,” but then the media returned the favor with lustful retorts of their own? Didn’t these people have parents to teach them manners?

            Freedom of speech is a cherished right protected by our Constitution. But people who abuse that right with vulgarity, slander, boorishness, and civil unrest debase themselves, our society, and our culture.

Forever Blowing Bubbles

            We often hear that people live in bubbles. This is particularly true of the Left: the intelligentia, academia, Hollywood, snowflakes, and a significant portion of the mainstream media. I think it was Pauline Kael film critic of The NewYorker who once said she couldn’t understand why Richard Nixon was elected president, because she didn’t know a single soul who had voted for him. She definitely lived in a bubble.

            Here’s another example. The cover story of the January-February issue of The Atlantic was a 22-page mini biography of Barack Obama entitled, “My President Was Black” by a fellow named Ta-Nehisi Coates. As one might imagine, the article was totally one-sided in promoting Obama to nothing short of sainthood, while beating up on whites, especially those who voted for Trump. “For eight years Barack Obama walked on ice and never fell.” Nary a mention of the multiple scandals of his administration nor of his catastrophic domestic and foreign policies. The best word I can come up with to describe the piece is “emetic.”

            I was interested in the responses to this article in the following March issue of The Atlantic. Sure enough, the letter-writers were gushing in their compliments for Coates’s work; one went so far as to describe Trump voters as “the worst monsters that humans can conjure up.”

            Speaking of monsters, what really caught my eye was a boxed feature of the answers to a question asked of the magazine’s readers, “Who is the worst leader of all time?” The top vote-getter, No. 1, was Adolph Hitler. OK. It’s not hard to argue with that pick. Now I’ll skip to No. 3, Napoleon Bonaparte. Really? Napoleon was one of the greatest military leaders in history and a marvelous administrator. Maybe I’m biased because of my French ancestry. Incidentally, my grandfather was named Louis-Napoleon, and his first-born son, my godfather, was christened Napoleon. Obviously, my ancestors didn’t think Napoleon was that bad.

            No. 4 on the list is Nicholas II of Russia, a leader who was replaced by a Communist regime. But Joseph Stalin, a monster who killed over 20 million of his people does not make the list, nor does Mao, another famous Communist who exterminated untold millions. No. 5 is Neville Chamberlin. What? The readers couldn’t find anyone else in the history of the world that was worse than Neville Chamberlin? Incredible.

            But what is even more incredible is the man in the No. 2 spot. Yes, I did skip this slot for effect. Because it proves my point about the people in the Left’s bubble. Are you ready for this? Sit down. The readers’ pick for the second worst leader of all time is none other than George W. Bush.

            ‘Nuf said.