Don Pesci: Most Republicans are RINOS
With apologies to Shakespeare: “Spending’s the thing, wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
There is in Connecticut no truer Trumpian liege lord than Joe Visconti, a gubernatorial candidate who described himself in one of his campaign documents as “Trump without the millions.”
When Trumpians refer disdainfully to “the DC Swamp,” they have in mind the kind of uncontrolled spending that, during the Obama administration, doubled President George Bush’s $10 trillion deficit. The current deficit now has been boosted by the U.S. Congress, and it was Trump who signed – very reluctantly, to be sure – the “drain the swamp’s” death warrant.
After Trump had signed the budget, Visconti advised: “Still love & support Trump but MAGA [Make America Great Again] is dead. You can’t give huge tax breaks and then give away a trillion $$ in spending in the same year and not expect a $22 Trillion deficit. Build the wall is dead. Lock her [Hillary Clinton] up is dead. Nothing but empty slogans now. As for Republicans? Most are Democrats, always have been. The bill should never have been assembled by Ryan the RINO [Republican In Name Only] but it was. Nothing but betrayal. Here’s how it rolls out in 18, we lose the House because Trump supporters aren’t blind and won’t come out for RINOs, Trump isn’t on the ballot. Pelosi takes over and starts impeachment proceedings day 1.”
Laura Ingraham lamented that the omnibus bill was a huge boondoggle designed to fool most of the people most of the time. Connecticut has its own version of the national omnibus bill, a catch-all bill at the end of the legislative season that few exhausted legislators manage to read. Such massive bills are pokes designed to hide crony swamp dweller's legislation.
The national poke more than adequately finances a military that former President Obama seriously under-financed. It might be recalled that Trump, entering office and during his rambunctious campaign, presented himself as a Pat Buchanan anti-interventionist, after which he surrounded himself with generals. The world is a messy place for anti-interventionist presidents. The budget does not adequately finance the border wall upon which Trump campaigned, but Planned Parenthood, against which Trump campaigned, receives its pound of budget flesh.
Earlier in January, Senator from Planned Parenthood Dick Blumenthal and other extremist socially progressive Democrats beat back a bill that would have imposed a mild and painless restriction on those seeking abortions, the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” The bill did not interfere with a woman’s right to procure an abortion; it simply restricted abortions to 20 weeks of a pregnancy, a period of time after which, science tells us, the fetus can feel pain. The bill also provided that women who defied the bill could not be prosecuted under the law, while those providing the abortion would be penalized.
Pro-abortion senators such as Blumenthal waved their old campaign placards against the bill. “It is shameful and disgraceful,” Blumenthal fumed, “that this measure should be before Congress. Hands off women’s health care.” The reader will note a tactical change in language: According to Blumenthal, the bill would not interfere with a woman’s “right to choose abortion,” merely hasten the choice. Abortion has little to do with health care and everything to do with abolishing parenthood. The regulation prone Blumenthal later would pronounce “immoral” those who defended a bill that regulated abortion on behalf of unborn children who feel the deadly pain of an abortionist’s knife. As Attorney General of Connecticut, Blumenthal consistently favored the regulation of businesses in his state, and he continues to do so in the Senate, bills affecting Planned Parenthood being a notable and glaring exception to his rule.
No, sorry. It is late-term abortion, the selling of baby parts and the inability of pro-abortionists to make relevant developmental distinctions in the stages of human life from conception to birth that is, by any stretch of the moral imagination, indecently immoral. In their campaigns, cowardly Republicans seem willing to cede the moral high-ground to the immoralists.
The imposition of the Trump tariffs has split Republicans, but Republicans and Trump were marching in tandem on the matter of immigration. That battle has been lost, largely owning to court decisions that have about them the stench of unconstitutionality. Here is Nancy Pelosi crowing her victory in assuring that the nation’s borders remain ungovernable and permeable: “Democrats won explicit language restricting border construction to the same see-through fencing that was already authorized under current law. The [omnibus spending] bill does not allow any increase in deportation officers or detention beds.”
So, the obscenely large spending bill is a win, win for progressive big spenders and a lose, lose for taxpayers. Democrats in Connecticut have offered Republicans the same plank that leads to the same shark-infested waters. Whether they will sleepwalk the plank to their appointed end remains very much an open question.
Don Pesci, a frequent contributor, is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.
Llewellyn King: Businesspeople flummoxed by Trump but must work with him
After more than six months of vilifying, ridiculing and laughing out loud at President Trump, Washington is getting down to realizing that he is the president — and he will not be gone, by some miracle, in the morning.
Ergo, it is time for companies, lobbyists and Congress to find a mechanism to work with Trump or around him. It might be described as a dance: the perplexity quickstep. Fleet feet are essential.
Business is treading with increasing alarm and tentativeness. Lobbyists are seeking White House sources for steps guidance. And Congress is tripping over new choreography.
A lot of business leaders thought that Trump, himself a businessman, would see government from the Oval Office as though he were still sitting in the corner office. They believed that he would seek the best path forward, going for the main chance and strategizing how to get there. Instead, the business community — from the chairmen of some of the largest companies, with whom I have spoken, to those of small- and medium-size companies — is flummoxed, reviling Trump in private and seeking advice from a variety of Washington gurus on what to do going forward.
Business people, who think that they understand cause and effect, cannot find a pattern that suggests the president has any understanding of that relationship. Business hankers for certainty, Trump for adulation. Business worries about the bottom line, Trump about the television commentariat. Business people who want to get a point of view across to the president are trying to get on television — particularly on the morning shows on Fox.
The trade associations, among the most effective lobbies in Washington, are working under the old rules while trying to learn the new dance steps. So they continue to “applaud” Trump appointments and to “congratulate” administration policy. Business and its lobbyists truly hope for lower corporate taxes and for loosening of regulations but they worry about the future of trade and trade agreements — and the concept that America can pull back all its overseas commitments. “America First” is a harbinger of bad things to come for global companies.
Many CEOs, including Elon Musk, of Tesla, Tim Cook, of Apple, and some other bold Silicon Valley C-suiters, have criticized Trump and quit his advisory committees. This has earned them public plaudits, but in doing so they have reduced their ability to affect things. Many others ask, “With Trump, isn’t it better to be on the inside, as close to the president as possible?” Trump is said to believe the last person with whom he spoke.
In Washington’s new dance, the hope is that when the music stops, you are the one standing next to him. You cannot do this if you have taken off to California in high dudgeon.
Many corporations are in the awkward position of needing good relationships with the White House because they are involved in government contracting — and most large corporations are, even as they like to denounce government. Less government, more contracts is the dichotomy of the business-government relationship.
So many corporations with interests in Washington are learning the perplexity quickstep: two quick steps to the right, two quick steps to the left, and circle to the rear. Dance near Trump and he might heap praise on you. Dance far from him and he might come after you for manufacturing overseas. Like his own party and the press, business waits for the new choreography which often arrives by Twitter in the early morning.
This was a week to marvel at the perplexity quickstep: Trump decided on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, putting the fate of nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants in lawmakers’ hands before undermining the whole effort by tweeting that if Congress did not act in six months, he would insert himself back into the process. Then he danced the GOP right off the floor and cut a deal with the House and Senate Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi, of California, and Chuck Schumer, of New York. Dizzying.
Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.
Democrats should cool the party's identity-politics obsession
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
If the Democrats want to make a big comeback they need to back off from the obsession with identity politics – e.g., the real or desired rights of the transgendered and other sexual-identity groups or this or that ethnic group – and focus on developing easily understandable positions that help as wide a range of people as possible.
At the heart of that would be addressing the economic security and overall quality of life of low- and middle-income people in general. Think of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and not the Rainbow Coalition. Some Democrats are social conservatives and the party’s promotion of such very recent innovations as gay marriage and transgenderedbathrooms has unsettled them, pulling them away from the party that has traditionally defended their socio-economic interests.
And, of course, they need to replace the senior leadership of the party – especially House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, 77. It’s long past time for fresh faces.
A sign of what the Democrats shouldn't be doing comes, natch, from California, where Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has added Texas, Alabama, South Dakota and Kentucky to North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee as states banned for most California state-financed travel because of their policies regarding gays, Lesbians and transgendered people. Mr. Becerra huffed that Golden State taxpayers’ money “will not be used to let people to travel to states who chose to discriminate.’’
This sanctimonious order will hurt California by, among other things, depriving it of many connections and information that would be good for its economy. And of course it discriminates against Californians who might need or want to go to those states. Idiotic!