Don’t drink transmission fluid. Or perform a swan dive off the Empire State Building. Or munch on a Tide Pod.
Be cautious, in other words, of the advice offered in “Boycott the Republican Party,” the Atlantic opinion piece authored by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, both scholars at the Brookings Institution. Their erudite suggestion? Conservatives should “vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).”
My Sunday column at Townhall.com, “Friendly Suicide Advice for the GOP,” reviewed their proposal and analysis. “[H]orrified” by President Trump, they see congressional Republicans as enablers of his “existential” threat “to American democracy.”
Big government has long frightened me, so I’m certainly not suggesting anyone relax just now. I do wonder, however, why these writers and others in the media have been so blasé to past presidential usurpations (noted in the column) with life-and-death implications.
Rauch and Wittes go so far as to reassuringly explain that “the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order.”
Really?
In 2016, every single Democratic Party U.S. Senator voted to partially repeal the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Democrats’ proposal would have largely ended the prohibition that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” replacing it with “Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”
In our present “democratic order,” the Constitution recognizes the primary importance of walling off political speech from regulation by these very politicians. The Democrats seek to repeal that order … that freedom … that criticism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Threat Assessment”
I think a great campaign reform idea is the make it unlawful to give money to a candidate you can’t vote for, and for the candidate to accept donations from anyone who can’t vote for him. Meaning registered voter in his district. That would get rid of the big money donors calling the shots in congress.
There is absolutely nothing friendly about this advice.This man is wrong on just about everything and at that, I’m being charitable…he could be lying through his teeth.The American people are fed up with Progressive trash like this. It will take years and more than one generation to expunge this Fabian stain from our presense..
Rauch and Wittes sounds to me like they’re the ones eating the tide pods if they think that anyone can not see the BS that they are trying to shove down Americans throats. The Democrat party is on the ropes and bleeding badly. They have gone way too far to the left and middle America has cast them out. The fact that people like that cackling disturbed Nancy Pelosi is one of their figureheads only proves that they aren’t fit to survive as a party. Here’s where the Libertarian Party really takes off and get disgruntled former Democrats to swell their ranks.
My response to the Atlantic is something stated centuries ago …
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Their piece shocked me only because Jonathan Rauch’s other writings have been sensical and he has even taken on various shibboleths of the Left. But here they were the same old BS.
I am a progressive and a liberal who tends to vote for Democrats. I too was appalled by the article. I do on occasion vote for Republicans, although disappointed that many on that side of the aisle voted against their principles for the tax bill, because of priorities set by the Republican leadership. Be that as it may, there are capable leaders on both sides of the aisle. And we should be voting for those people.