Conservatives have no one but Republican leadership to blame for the current landscape.
Republicans in Congress have given the American people no reason to vote for them.
It is sad really that while the political world is obsessed with Donald Trump’s latest tweet and Hillary’s constant lying, some of the most important policy issues are tossed aside in our national political debate.
Republicans, who control the agenda in both the House and the Senate, have not led any fights with President Obama to show the differences between the parties. One of the reasons why America is so obsessed with Crooked Hillary and Mr. Trump’s Tweets is that Republicans in Congress have failed to do their job.
And that job is to fight.
Republicans in Congress over the past two years have fought on nothing, even though they were elected to fight on everything.
To the contrary, the McConnell–Ryan Republicans have given President Obama victory after victory on not ever trying to defund or repeal Obamacare, passing a rewrite of No Child Left Behind that continues the federalization of education, writing and passing a Puerto Rico bailout bill, playing defense on the Second Amendment, and conspiring on a trade deal crafted by Pres. Obama. Not to mention that they refuse to use the power of the purse to defund Pres. Obama’s agenda. Furthermore, Republicans failed to fight on the Iran deal (they passed a bill that gave President Obama the power to sign a treaty without Congressional approval) and are terrified to fight President Obama’s radical bathrooms agenda in the United States.
Republicans in Congress over the past two years have fought on nothing, even though they were elected to fight on everything.
I am not in the camp of people who believe that this election is over, yet I largely agree with Erick Erickson’s Friday post over at The Resurgent, “The Irony of This Loss”:
Republicans are heading to November’s White House loss for one overarching reason. They decided to do nothing controversial, to play it safe, and to make sure, above all else, that they were not disliked. The result is a party that was perceived by many of its early tea party supporters as cowardly, unwilling to hold Barack Obama accountable, and too beholden to special interests instead of willing to keep promises. The Mitch McConnell “play it safe and don’t rock the boat” approach has thrown the GOP into the rapids and is about to cause the party boat to capsize.
The government shutdown in 2013 really exposed the GOP. They quickly threw Ted Cruz under the bus and pointed the finger at him. “Not us. Him!” they said. The all star panel on Special Report on Fox and the Republican pundits on CNN and elsewhere dutifully parroted Mitch McConnell’s talking points blaming Cruz. The Wall Street Journal declared there was no establishment and Cruz was a vainglorious oaf hell bent on the GOP’s destruction. Then they promptly surrendered on the debt ceiling fight handing the President a blank check to raise the debt.
Erickson is spot on in arguing that Republicans in Congress have done nothing to help set the table for Donald Trump, Senate Republicans up this year, and Republicans in the House of Representatives this fall. The leadership has given them zero issues to run on. The McConnell-Ryan Republicans have avoided conflict at all costs and have hurt the chances of Republican candidates across the country. The strategy of doing nothing and hoping that your enemy makes a mistake ain’t gonna work this cycle.
The New York Times editorialized in Nov. 2014 that the last election cycle resulting in the largest majority for House Republicans since 1928 and control of the Senate was won because “Republicans ran a single-theme campaign of pure opposition to President Obama.” That election was a success because Republicans promised to dig in and fight the president at every turn.
Then they didn’t.
When these Republicans got elected, they decided to fight on only one issue: the Obama nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to Gallup, the lack of Republican opposition to Obama over the past two years has led Obama from an all-time low approval rating in November of 2014 of 40 percent to his current approval rating of 52 percent. That is directly attributable to feckless Republican leadership in both the House and Senate.
When we complain about how terrible Trump is doing right now and that the polls right now point to a Hillary win, don’t forget that the McConnell-Ryan Republican leadership in the House and Senate share the burden of the blame, because they have given Republicans running in New Hampshire to Ohio to Missouri to Alaska to Arizona not one issue to run on.
Source: Democrats aren’t winning, Republicans are just losing
