GOP
Leaders Toss Loin Cloth to Democrats on Obama’s War on Suburbs by Daniel
Horowitz, 5/19/16
Former Sen. Jim DeMint used to say
he’d rather have 30 principled conservative Republicans in the Senate than 60
liberal Republicans like Arlen Specter. Even many conservatives were
skeptical of his strategy at the time. To this very day, many
conservatives are convinced that you must always support the GOP nominee for
Congress in a general election, even if he wasn’t the conservative you wanted
in the primary. After all, it’s always better to have some Republican in
office than a Democrat, right?
Wrong! And it’s about time we
learn that lesson.
Today’s votes on Obama’s
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) “war on the suburbs” program
demonstrates, once again, that having a GOP conference full of liberals is
actually worse than having a smaller conference full of
conservatives. Much like an interception is worse than an incomplete pass
in football or a ground out into a double play is worse than a strike out in
baseball, electing liberal Republicans helps Democrats more in the long run
than working with a minority of conservatives to combat the Left and strive to
win future elections with an unvarnished message to voters.
As we observed earlier this week, Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) amendment to abolish the war on the suburbs would
have drawn a sharp line between the parties and empowered Republicans to run
against Democrats who allow the federal government to extort local communities
into accepting their social engineering. Specifically, the Lee amendment
would have defunded the entire AFFH tool which allows HUD to extort localities
that don’t have enough low income housing in their jurisdictions to meet the
illegal HUD regulation.
Needless to say, all but a few Republicans
will not utter a word about this issue to the media in their home states and
make this an election issue. This is the muddled mess we have with a
bipartisan oligarchy.
Instead of allowing that amendment
to go unchallenged, leadership let liberal Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who had never previously engaged on this issue, to
work with Democrats on a bipartisan amendment “solving” the problem. Except
it didn’t solve the problem; it merely prohibited an activity that doesn’t
occur. It was crafted carefully to only prohibit HUD from actually
redrawing zoning maps, something they have never done. They never tell
county government exactly where they must redraw their maps, just that if they
fail to comply with the data from the AFFH tool, they will lose their funding
and be subject to anti-discrimination lawsuits. However, on paper, the
Collins amendment sounds like it is blocking this unpopular regulation –
exactly the cover Democrats needed!
All but 9 Democrats proceeded to
vote for the Collins amendment today, giving them bipartisan cover in their
states to claim they stopped HUD’s intrusion into local zoning laws. The 9
no votes came from Democrats in very liberal states or those not up for
reelection this cycle. Clearly, most Democrats are feeling the heat on
this issue.
Then, knowing that all Democrats
would vote down the Lee amendment, most Republicans, including members of
leadership, were free to vote the right way on the Lee amendment with the full
confidence that it would be defeated anyway. The Senate voted 60-38 to
table (kill) the Lee Amendment, with 16 Republicans
falling on their swords, so many more
can get a hall pass. Needless to say, all but a few Republicans will not
utter a word about this issue to the media in their home states and make this
an election issue. This is the muddled mess we have with a bipartisan
oligarchy.
Levin is
Furious
http://therightscoop.com/a-furious-mark-levin-explains-how-republicans-just-joined-obama-in-war-against-the-suburbs/
No comments:
Post a Comment