We have reached the point where a clear majority of sitting Republican Senators do not deserve your vote even in the general election. I say this because, quite simply, they have demonstrated time and time again that they are not on our side. Instead, they are on their own side. The priorities that these nattering, out of touch buffoons have embraced are so far out of step with the voters who sent them to office that they don’t even have the good sense to be embarrassed at how clueless they sound.
The latest example, part one billion in an apparently never ending series, concerns funding for Planned Parenthood. Republican voters (hell, really everyone with a pulse who is not an elected Democrat) have been horrified for three straight weeks as video after video has been released showing that Planned Parenthood is very obviously in the business of selling baby parts for money.
Now listen, regardless of how you feel about abortion generally, anyone of even marginal conservative (or libertarian!) principles can agree that taxpayer money should not be going to an organization like this. Look, this is a slam dunk issue – by a huge, overwhelming margin, every American demographic (including millenials and women) oppose taxpayer funding of abortions. Right now, the public has been exposed, in a very graphic way, to the abhorrent practices of Planned Parenthood. There has never been a better time in this generation to highlight not only what a terrible organization Planned Parenthood is, but also the absolute wastefulness of the massive amounts of taxpayer money they receive.
Everyone who gets out there and actually takes the time to vote Republican, donate Republican, and volunteer for Republican candidates has been mesmerized for the last three weeks with this fight. Planned Parenthood is reeling and their PR efforts are failing. Republican activists are pleading and begging with the Senate to do something to demonstrate a willingness to fight. For the first time since probably 2011, voters are furious and care deeply about this issue.
The Republican Senate is also furious, and they care deeply. Not about the taxpayer-funded dismemberment and sale of baby parts, but about… the Senate calendar:
Then Lee tried to push through a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. That, too, failed to muster enough support for a vote. On Monday, Lee is expected to try to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority vote of 51 senators, effectively circumventing the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster after Democrats defeated an attempt to repeal the health care law on Sunday.
Cruz’s Texas colleague pointedly shot down his effort. [mc_name name=’Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001056′ ], the GOP’s chief vote-counter, called Cruz’s strategy “a terrible mistake” and urged Republicans to vote against it, a rare public disagreement.
“If the rule that the junior senator from Texas is arguing for is embraced, we will lose all control of the Senate schedule. There will be chaos,” Cornyn said. “Any senator who wants to get a vote on an amendment will be entitled to do so and that can’t be the rule. It’s not the rule. It’s never been the rule.”
And here is the disconnect. No one who is not actually in the Senate gives a crap about the freaking Senate calendar. Voters do not send Republican Senators to Washington so that they might create a more well-organized calendar than the Democrats. They send them to Washington to reflect conservative values and to actually have votes on the issues that Republicans care about. If that involves some inconvenience to the most privileged 100 human beings on the planet, then so be it.
The fact that John Cornyn allowed himself to actually be quoted offering this pathetic excuse in public shows that he either does not understand how much of a priggish oaf he sounds like to ordinary people, bleating on about the precious Senate calendar while video after video condemning Planned Parenthood drops, or believes that he and the rest of his colleagues are so bulletproof that he does not care.
I don’t care which ultimately is the case. We can’t any longer delude ourselves into believing that most of the GOP Senate is good, but led by a few bad apples. All it would have taken would have been 11 out of the 54 GOP Senators to stand up for a roll call vote on this issue. That’s about 20%. And the Senate GOP couldn’t even muster that.
I get that Cruz can be a divisive figure and that he rubs some people the wrong way. But frankly I am glad that he has highlighted, in a very graphic way, that the vast, vast majority of the GOP Senate is not worth saving or having in office, at all.
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