Rally up, Conservatives
As hard as it is to believe, last week's election returns hadn't even gotten cold when I'd already started to see reports that either John Boehner or Roy Blount - or God-forbid both - will return to the Capitol in their current posts in the Republican leadership. This week hasn't even seen my first cup of Monday java yet but we already hear Novak confirm the Corner scuttlebut.
Politics is perception. What did we hear Republicans saying when Mark Foley resigned? That at least we kicked him out - Democrat pervert Gerry Studds was re-elected six times. What happened to Tom Delay and William Jefferson? Republican Tom Delay was indicted on bogus corruption charges, but we made him step down anyway. Democrat William Jefferson was caught with cold cash - in his freezer - and he was re-elected. It's sad there's a double standard, but that's the way we play the game. More importantly, our voters expect us to play that way or they stay home and we get voted out.
Is it so hard to remember this is what happened just last week? In a stunning repudiation, Republicans were seen by most Americans as the party of big government. And who passed the legislation that gave us that big government? It wasn't the entitlement fairy, it was the old leadership of Tom Delay and Roy Blount. When Delay resigned, conservatives wanted a full cleanup of the House leadership, and a "return to our principles". They settled for Boehner instead of allowing Blount to succeed Delay as majority leader, and then they allowed Blount to stay as whip. Then they prayed this would be good enough to stop the bleeding.
Politics is perception. It obviously wasn't good enough to change the perception, and we got our clocks cleaned.
"He hasn't been in long enough to change things," some are saying. Look, that's a cop-out. If Boehner was going to change the perception that The Old Boys Club was running the show, we wouldn't be in the minority right now.
I, for one, am not going to sit on my hands. What can we do about it? We can give our Republican Congressmen the same treatment we gave the Senate when someone tried to prevent passage of transparency-in-government legislation.
Call your Congressmen and insist that he or she vote for Mike Pence for Minority Leader and John Shadegg for Minority Whip. Or perception and reality will keep us in that minority.
