The rules of politics and military battle are very similar. In both, you pick your battlefield and do not let the enemy pick his. You fight the battle on your terms, not the enemy’s.
Unfortunately the Republicans in Washington have decided they are going to let the enemy pick the battlefield and they are going to fight on the Democrats’ terms, not theirs.
What is this fight? How are the Republicans managing to lose the war again? Is there anything we can do?
The fight is the so-called “fiscal cliff” fight.
Barack Obama immediately set the fight in terms of a fight over revenue. Instead of trying to set the fight on his terms, John Boehner immediately agreed and started from the premise that the government needs more money.
The problem is not that the government needs more money. The problem is the government has too much money. Every year, Republicans come out and complain about government waste. Tom Coburn has made a career of doing this. The Government Accountability Office has identified hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and duplication of services that could be eliminated.
Every year, Republicans highlight these reports. They are good for press conferences and a couple of days of good press. The Republicans announce their outrage over this type of spending.
What happens next?
Not a thing.
Nothing.
Zero.
The wasteful spending is never cut. The outrage is completely forgotten until it is needed for a reelection campaign.
Is John Boehner even talking about reducing spending? No, he is talking about more revenue. This is the problem.
Boehner is willing to go along with more revenue if it comes from eliminating tax loopholes in exchange for reduced rates.
Do you know what the problem with that is?
The loopholes go away and while the rates may be lowered for a while, eventually they are raised again.
The real problem here is that we have a Republican Party controlling the House of Representatives that is not committed to small government.
Instead of discussing how we can eliminate loopholes, we should be talking about how we can create more tax loopholes. We need to borrow a tactic from the left. The left loves to take a system or a program they do not like, make modifications to that program until it becomes unworkable and fails, then insists their idea is the only one that can save the program they broke.
We should do the same with the Federal Income Tax. We should be encouraging our Representatives to keep adding loopholes to the tax code until it becomes unworkable. Then it should be replaced a national consumption tax (after the 16th Amendment is repealed).
The Hill ran a fascinating article on how John Boehner has consolidated power in the House of Representatives. Boehner, like other RINOs loves to use a scorched earth policy against conservatives who dare to disagree with him but cannot do anything other than raise his freshly laundered white flag of surrender against the Democrats.
In the Hill article, Kevin Smith, a Boehner spokesman says the House Republicans are “the last line of defense against a government that spends, taxes and borrows too much.”
That would be amusing, if we did not know better.
In the next few weeks, there will be fiscal cliff negotiations. Barack Obama will not only win, he will clean the Republicans’ clock. He will get his tax increases and there will be no reduction in spending. The deficit will continue to grow.
Despite the all claims to the contrary, Boehner will surrender. How do we know this?
Because this is what he has done every time. He did it in the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. He did it when they had the budget fight. He did it when sequestration was created and shoved down America’s throat.
If it were not for the Tea Party, John Boehner would only be the Minority Leader of the House. For those of us who are in the Tea Party, who put so much into this fight for America, we need to remember. We did not fight for John Boehner nor did we fight for the Republican Party. We fought for America. We fought for our children and our grandchildren.
If John Boehner and the Republican Party want to abandon their commitment to America, then perhaps it is time for the Tea Party to abandon its commitment to the Republicans.
