The Patriot Post® · Buckle Up for a Bumpy Ride

Anyone who believes that the GOP will have a newly chastened Obama to deal with in 2015 must be living in one of those states where marijuana was recently legalized. After all, the same guy who referred to the 2010 midterms as a shellacking for the Democrats dismissed the even more impressive 2014 drubbing with a shrug and “The Republicans had a good night.”

As for the two-thirds of registered who didn’t bother voting, Obama said, “I hear you.” At first, that struck me as truly bizarre. The schmuck hears what people who aren’t talking are saying? But then I took a look at those ears of his and decided that, like our dog Angel, who apparently has the ability to hear the mailman even when he’s three houses away, Obama’s jug handles aren’t merely decorative.

Furthermore, he let us know that his idea of compromise was for the Republicans to tell him which of his bills and policies they were ready to support. Compromise should be the last thing on the minds of Boehner and McConnell. After all, they just received a mandate that dwarfs the one Obama boasted he had after winning a squeaker in 2012. And in 2009, lest we forget, the Great Compromiser took his rightful place at the top of the list of Bad Losers. Or as one of my readers, Algirdas Carneckis, put it, “I would love to be there to hear John McCain tell Obama: ‘We won, you lost.’”

One lesson I assume the Democrats learned after Mark Udall in Colorado and Wendy Davis in Texas got thumped is that the phony GOP War on Women is officially over and, happily, its last two victims were those who waged it incessantly.

Fortunately, the GOP ran gaffe-free campaigns. The only wrong note that I was aware of was an email signed by Sarah Palin, seeking contributions to help Rob Maness win the Senate race in Louisiana. It arrived the day after Maness received 14% of the vote, running a distant third to Landrieu and Cassidy.

On the other hand, Tea Party favorites Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, all did themselves proud, campaigning far and wide for Republicans of every persuasion.

I also received an email from a friend of mine, letting me know that I should rejoice because 33% of my fellow Jews actually voted for Republican candidates. It seems that in midterms, we average just 26% and that 2014 marked a 30 year high. That sound you hear is me pounding my head against a wall.

If I were John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, I would urge House and Senate Republicans to pass every bill on their wish list along to the White House. Give America a chance to see Obama in action, vetoing legislation that calls for finally closing the border; drilling for oil on federal land; building the Keystone pipeline; cutting corporate taxes; deconstructing the Affordable Care Act; whittling the EPA down to a manageable size; getting the federal government out of the education racket; and bulking up the military and using it to actually win any war in which we have a legitimate reason to be engaged.

Obama has spent four years damning the House Republicans as obstructionists, claiming they’re the reason nothing got done. Now that he can no longer use Harry Reid as his own personal goalie, making sure that legislation he dislikes never reaches the Senate floor, let alone his desk, even the dumbest liberals will get a gander at what true obstructionism looks like.

If Obama carries through on his threat to make illegal Latinos legal, House Republicans can retaliate by cutting funding for the Democratic base’s pet projects, and they should start with Planned Parenthood and the National Endowment of the Arts. In fact, they should do that even if Obama backs off on his threat.

I know that the Democrats keep trying to convince us that open borders are the main concern of Hispanics. I don’t believe it. Their chief concern is the economy, and additional cheap labor only serves to undercut their earning power.

After all, Mexico is nearby. If they miss their relatives so damn much, they can always go down and visit them.

The folks who really champion illegal aliens are Latino politicians who are looking to inflate their influence; the Catholic Church, which seeks to fill its pews and collection plates; and the folks – Democrats and Republicans, alike – who own hotels, restaurants and large farms, and want a steady flow of cheap labor.

Those who have a vested interest in keeping the borders porous portray those of us who argue that a sovereign nation either maintains control of immigration or it is no longer a sovereign nation as racists. Their contention is that we simply hate Mexicans and Central Americans and wouldn’t be at all concerned if the illegal aliens were all from Sweden. Well, the fact is that we now have upwards of 20 million illegal Hispanics in America. To give you a better sense of that number, if every person living in the Nordic nations – Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway – packed up today and moved, lock, stock and leverpastej, to America, the total number would only be 25 million.

We keep hearing we shouldn’t shut down our borders, even though every other nation on earth regards protecting its homeland as its first order of business, and that these Hispanics are all hard-working and wish to pay their own way. But the fact is they don’t; most of them depend entirely or in great part on the largesse of American taxpayers for their health care, their schooling and their welfare checks. Even if you ignore the numbers who are involved in crime, there is still a perception in their ranks that America is one big juicy piñata.

Finally it is time to report the results of the latest Prelutsky poll, which asked respondents whether they identify themselves as Tea Party or Republican.

I heard from 141 readers, 129 of whom called themselves Republicans; a dozen, Tea Partiers. It should be said that at least 40 of the 129 had kind words to say about the Tea Party. The general feeling, at least from those who let me know they are true conservatives, was that the Tea Party serves to keep the GOP from veering too far away from basic constitutional principles.

The main objection, one I happen to share, was that those in the Tea Party too often appear to despise Republican moderates more than they do Progressives, and instead of following the sterling example of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, and displaying a united front on Election Day, often seem willing to stay home and allow Democrats free rein to destroy America.

As I see it, if you’re unwilling to settle for what you regard as the lesser of two evils, you are, it seems pretty clear, encouraging the greater.