To Establishment GOP: We Will Remember This With Our Votes!

At a Lincoln Club luncheon in Pasadena, California, the featured speaker was some random person from the local Republican Party. He spoke for about half an hour, noting how wrong the Obama Administration is on a variety of issues. Blah blah blah–nothing upon which we didn’t agree and nothing we haven’t heard before and said to each other. In other words, the speaker was preaching to the choir and doing so in a very boring fashion.  He took questions at the end and was asked what the GOP could do to attract better candidates. The speaker noted that local talk show host Larry Elder was on the calendar to speak at a future luncheon and that he would make a fantastic candidate.

I shot out of my seat and informed the speaker that Larry Elder had put himself forward as a California Senate candidate. He traveled to DC to kiss all the appropriate rings. The national GOP instead chose Carly Fiorina as a candidate.

Would Larry Elder have won when Carly didn’t? I don’t know. My point is that the GOP leadership is woefully out of touch and cowardly. I assume the GOP at the national level considered Carly a safer gamble, with no consideration to Larry’s insight, his ability to articulate conservative principles and absolute fearlessness.

And now we are seeing those same cowards criticize Ted Cruz.  Frankly, I wish I were surprised that Sen. Cruz’s fiercest critics are members of his own Party, and conservative pundits. But I learned long ago that those who criticize the courageous are usually the most cowardly.

Hillary Clinton said “what difference does it make” at the Benghazi hearings and we all howled. But what I’m hearing from Republican politicians, columnists and talking heads are simply versions of the same thing.  They are asking questions like, “What’s his end game–what’s his strategy?”  And they are cowardly exclaiming, “It’s the Republicans who will be blamed if government is shut down!”  And of course when cloture is mentioned, someone mentions “continuing resolutions” and a stopgap bill. Then I want to stick a pencil in my eye.

Ted Cruz knows that some battles are worth fighting, even if defeat is virtually assured. When Aragorn, in the Lord of the Rings, rallied his compatriots to attack the evil that sought to defeat Frodo, Gimli replied:  Certainty of death, small chance of success…What are we waiting for? 

It was Gimli I thought of when I watched Sen. Cruz, eloquently articulating–for 21+ hours–arguments against Obamacare that no Republican before him had the passion to make.

Is it a coincidence that Ted Cruz is a Freshman Senator? I don’t think so. He hasn’t been in DC long enough to forget he was sent there to represent his constituents. Raise your hand if, like me, your leadership in Congress, no matter what letter beside their name, acts as though matters of government are best left to the ruling class, no matter the opinion of the unwashed masses who elected them.

Jonah Goldberg, in his September 24 column, spoke of how change in DC is only made through “winning elections and messy consensus building”. Jonah knows Washington better than I do, but how infuriating is it that change is not possible until the ruling class negotiates and compromises? We the People are overwhelming against Obamacare; we’ve spoken loud and clear in poll after poll and demonstration after demonstration. We don’t want it. And yet we can’t get rid of it until the “ruling class” gets around to negotiating and compromising?

Well, there’s a time for negotiation and compromising and this isn’t one of them. Obamacare is an affront to all that the United States of America was founded upon, and we as conservatives have been woefully ill served by those we elected to represent us.

That is, until Ted Cruz spoke for more than 21+ hours on the Senate floor.

Sen. Cruz was speaking for all of us who face the implementation of Obamacare with horror and dread. As Obamacare is fully rolled out and more people recognize it for the train wreck it is, it will be leaders like Ted Cruz who will be remember with favor–and with our votes.