The Disloyal Non-Opposition
Thursday, January 15, 2009 4:12 PM
In a constitutional system of government, there is a concept of the loyal opposition. In principle the loyal opposition remains loyal to the system of government while expressing and acting in opposition to the faction in power. In US politics since the Civil War, where a two-party system has tended to prevail, when the Democrats dominate the executive and legislative branches, the role of loyal opposition has historically been the responsibility of the Republican Party.
But that was the good old days. Many prominent elements of the Republican party today are failing to oppose the Democrat plan to remake the American economy according to a socialist utopian model. Worse yet, many of these Republicans are shamelessly compromising their loyalty to the Constitution.
Examples? You want some examples? OK, here they are:
- The TARP Bailout. Let's start with that. Although a majority of Americans opposed it, Republicans helped the Democrats pass the legislation. Shamefully, George W. Bush, the Republican president, collaborated, or perhaps even led, the Democrat effort to ram the act through Congress.
- Confirmation Hearings. As of today, with only a few exceptions, Republicans in Congress are allowing Democrat nominations to sail through, rather then fighting them tooth and nail, the way the Democrats fought President Bush's nominations. Why? In the words of Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, “In the interest of building bipartisan support."
- The Tennessee Speaker of the House. A Tennessee politician named Kent Williams cut a deal with state Democrats to make him Speaker of the House against the outraged opposition of the state GOP. This led Michael Patrick Leahy, leader of Top Conservatives on Twitter (#TCOT) to call for Kent Williams' expulsion from the GOP.
- The Birth Certificate Cover-up. As I wrote previously in this weblog, President-Elect Obama has created the appearance of a cover-up of a potential major scandal by refusing to release his birth certificate, if one actually exists, attesting that he meets the qualification of "natural born citizen" for the US Presidency. Instead, he is relying on a questionable secondary document from the Hawaii Department of Health and a statement by the health director that his actual birth certificate is "on record." Does any Congressional Republican have the moral courage to do his duty and subpoena the birth certificate? It appears not.
Ayn Rand wrote eloquently about the sanction of the victim:
I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”
In the long run, the victims will be the American middle class, reliant on its survival and living standard on the capitalist economic system, and the Constitution which makes capitalism possible. In the short run, the victim will be the Republican Party itself, which appears to be sanctioning Democrat abuse of and incremental erosion of the Constitution for the sake of "bipartisanship." The GOP is on the brink of going the way of the Whig Party (1833-1856), the Prohibition Party (1867), Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party (1912-14) and other colorful but meaningless artifacts of history.
Will the ultimate victims, the American middle class, sanction the machinations of the far-left Democrats in the way that the much of the GOP is now doing. I have enough confidence in the American spirit to write this: "The word is NO."