I just finished a piece about Syria from the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, “Why America Is Saying ‘No’.” She sums it up pretty well: “Syria and Obama: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.”
But it brings to mind another question, which is “Why is John Boehner saying ‘yes’?”
After scouring the world, Obama has found a single ally willing to side with us: Albania. The rest of the world sees the foolishness of the enterprise. And within the country, outside of the in-bred enclaves of the East Coast establishment, the country is erupting over this nonsense. I was watching videos of town hall exchanges. Here in Arizona, a woman from Syria who declared herself a long-time fan of McCain’s confronted him in his town hall. She started out with pleading, but as her emotions took over she began hollering at him. Islamists are pouring into her country, she says, trying to take advantage of the situation, and if the United States starts meddling, it will mess things up and her people, the Syrian Christians, will suffer and possibly be eliminated. That we would mess up the situation is not hard to believe, considering our recent track record in the Arab world. We have helped mess up Egypt, then Libya. And of a host of other things Obama has tried to do there, since early in his presidency, none of them have turned out as predicted.
We know why Obama wants to go in. He drew his red line and he is tired of being called a wimp. I know why McCain wants to go in. He gets this self-righteous zeal about things, staking out what he can portray as a moral high ground and, like an angry chihuahua, he won’t let go. And being a hawk on foreign policy helps him appear conservative.
But why is Boehner saying “yes”?
The more of these issues that come up and the more I watch John Boehner, the more I realize how different he is from what he tries to portray. He portrays himself as the leader of the opposition party, but he does not view himself as that at all. He is a firmly entrenched member of the ruling class, the Washington establishment, and the role he has assumed is to try to rally the reluctant Republicans to every establishment cause he can.
Look at what he has done in obstructing a special committee to investigate Benghazi. He dutifully conducted his partisan, superficial investigation, issued his report which was pretty much ignored. In his mind, that earns him the needed “street cred” as the leader of the opposition. But in spite of being petitioned by nearly two-thirds of the Republican caucus in the House to create a special committee, he won’t do it. I’d love to hear another explanation about why he won’t do that, but the only one I can come up with is that he wants to help protect Hillary Clinton and other establishment friends who may be involved.
Another issue. With arm-twisting and outright threats, he pushed through the Violence Against Women Act, a little-noticed piece of legislation that not only unconstitutionally nationalized domestic violence crimes, but was loaded with goodies for the Left. And in every budget battle, he seems to start with a lot of strong rhetoric and ends up agreeing to the most Liberal, big spending, big taxing deal he thinks he can push Republicans to accept.
He is the Establishment’s ambassador to Republicans, and his role is to push through as much Establishment legislation as he can, while still maintaining a conservative facade, for the sake of his credibility.
A harsh assessment, yes. But I’d love to hear any other explanation that makes sense of everything he is doing.
Peggy Noonan summed up this Syria issue beautifully. At the end of her article, she makes this observation:
“There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus. The Syria debate isn’t, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That’s not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington’s central governing assumptions.”
I think she hit the nail on the head. We are no longer the citizens that were given unalienable rights by our Creator with a government that derives its just powers from our consent. No, a ruling class has emerged and is solidifying its power, and we are the subjects. And the hope is that more and more people are waking up to this.
Link: Read my earlier comments about how to get rid of John Boehner.
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