-By Warner Todd Huston
Think of this scenario: Your party has been swept into office with the biggest majority in generations. The majority of Americans think the country is on the verge of emergency and want things fixed pronto. And you are poised to become the next Speaker of the House. So what do you do? A). Steel your party for the hard and fast work to come, or B). Announce you are handing power over to the losing side, the one responsible for most of the recent destruction of the country the voters are upset about?
Well, if you are the Republican’s John Boehner, presumptive Speaker of the House, apparently it’s “B” because John Boehner is announcing that he intends to hand unprecedented power to the left with new House rules as soon as he takes the speaker’s gavel. Have Republicans learned nothing?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Boehner intends to implement a power-sharing policy that will give the minority party more power than its ever had in the House. Why would he do this? God only knows.
Boehner refused the Journal’s request to comment on this plan, but whatever reason he has for kowtowing to Democrats before he’s even banged that gavel for the first time it is troubling. Sure, he’s for weeks been saying that he wants to be a more sensible, more fair House Speaker, we know. But to capitulate before the first shot is fired? It is idiotic.
It does sound good for him to ring the bell of the reasonable, I suppose. To make it seem as if he wants to be less divisive, more inclusive, kinder and gentler. This all makes the Old Media weep with joy. But one needs to remember why that is. The media loves this sort of talk because the media imagines that this means Boehner intends to hamper the GOP out of the gate and the Old Media loves that the GOP might be hobbled.
But here is the reality: the voters think that things are going badly for the country. Playing patty cake with the Democrats will not fix the problems we have in this nation. The GOP needs to wield as much raw power out of the gate as it can to put this country back on track.
Further, the very voters that rose as a unified block to put Republicans in charge are not going to take kindly a speaker that simply hands power right back to the party that was put out of power. If anything is going to upset the Tea Party patriots that put the GOP in power in Washington it will be a weakling’s move like this.
Now, perhaps after a few years it would make sense to initiate some kinder, gentler power-sharing rules. But right out of the gate to cripple the majority party with nonsense like this only tends to show that the GOP has not heard the voters.
Further we already know this won’t work. When squishy RINO Trent Lott became GOP Senate Majority leader in 2001 he tried to bend over backwards for Democrats, too. He also issued power-sharing rules. The Democrats stuck it up his rear with vigor. Lott was a wholly ineffective, feckless majority leader because of it.
There is a reason past speakers wielded power like a hammer. Soft power does not work in foreign relations and it doesn’t work in domestic emergencies, either.
Boehner is treading dangerous ground and he’s yet to even take the job!
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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