Profiles in cowardice

I’m with Andrew McCarthy on this one: Speaker John Boehner’s decision to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration for its executive overreach represents a timorous attempt by the speaker (and the Republican establishment) to avoid using the power granted to Congress by the Constitution - notably, the power of the purse – out of a fear of media backlash.

The usefulness of Boehner and his ilk has reached a nadir. The establishment fights tooth and nail to prevent its displacement by genuine conservatives -by people who will use their legal power to challenge a lawless administration, using existing constitutional remedies – and then wastes everyone’s time engaging in wholly unbelievable political theater that will accomplish nothing.

If GOP, Inc. has secretly decided that the outlook for a return to smaller, more transparent and less intrusive government is doomed, then it literally has no purpose but to exist as a kind of union for professional time servers.

Now, I’m not saying that their pessimism is necessarily unjustified; the accumulation of bribes extended to an increasingly large number of voting blocs in the U.S. by a series of administrations, in conjunction with a predominantly leftist media and an educational system rotten with “progressive” ideological imperatives (not to mention sheer incompetence), does not exactly inculcate a spirit of vigorous independence in the minds and hearts of the people, so perhaps we have reached, and gone beyond, the tipping point. But we won’t know for sure until we’ve given the people a chance to cast an honest vote – for this or that specific individual who has clearly made a case for cutting government down to size, rather than for old Go-Along-to-Get-Along, handpicked by the establishment, who’s become a mere fixture in the Capitol, like, say, an antique porcelain sink in the washroom, fitted with a charming bronze faucet and crystal handles (although considerably less useful than that).