The GOP Will Stand or Fall on These Two Issues

Dear GOP:

The American people handed you a landslide victory in 2014. Not because they like you, but because they want Obama’s determination to turn America into an impotent, Euro-style socialist welfare state stopped dead in its tracks. Currently there are two issues on the table that are going to define you as fighters for ordinary Americans, or as the go-along-to-get-along, elitist, ruling class wimps you have been for quite some time. And if such spinelessness leads to your ultimate demise, all well and good. A nation where millions of Americans have no one speaking for them in Washington, D.C. is no nation at all.

Issue one, U.S. Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, or as the relevant information reveals, Eric Holder, the Sequel. What relevant information? In a country with two distinct political parties, the idea that the women who’d be in charge of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency believes illegal aliens have as much right to work in America as legal immigrants and American citizens would be more than enough to DQ her.

But bless her progressive heart, she’s given the GOP far more ammunition than that. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked Lynch if she’d oppose using a drone to kill an American citizen – on American soil. She refused to say whether or not the federal government has that authority. She also opposes voter ID laws apparently willing, just like Eric Holder, to thumb her nose at the 2008 Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana’s voter identification law, and the Court’s 2013 decision striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 4 required states to get “pre clearance” from the Dept. of Justice prior to changing their voting laws, due to their historic racism. Unlike the American left, the Court decided times have changed.

Still not convinced, GOPers? How about the fact that just before the nomination hearings, Lynch’s Eastern District of New York office quietly dropped a civil forfeiture case against Bi-County Distributors, a Long Island business targeted for nothing more than a “suspicious pattern” of bank deposits? The feds seized $447,000 from the company and held it for nearly three years, during which time Bi-County’s owners, brothers Jeffrey, Richard, and Mitch Hirsch never got a hearing before judge. What they did get was series of offers from Lynch’s office saying the brothers could get some of their money back – if they agreed to forfeit the rest. Lynch apparently thought the negative publicity might derail her nomination, so she ultimately agreed to return all the money. A chastened and wise nominee? Lynch insisted there are “safeguards at every step of the (civil forfeiture) process” to protect innocent people, “certainly implemented by [her] office … as well as an opportunity to be heard.”

Jeffrey Hirsch has other ideas. “Nobody in America should have to live through the nightmare we’ve experienced," he said. "Civil forfeiture nearly destroyed our business, even though we did nothing wrong.”

We’re not through yet, Republicans. Last week, John Cruz, former HSBC vice president and relationship manager turned whistleblower, informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that Lynch allowed the banking behemoth to enter into a “deferred prosecution” settlement for an alleged money laundering scheme that involved celebrities, criminals, drug lords and terrorists. HSBC agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” – in exchange for dropping criminal investigations and prosecutions of HSBC directors or employees.

Remember too big to fail? This looks alarmingly like to big to prosecute. Nonetheless, Lynch defended the deal, insisting it had produced consequences that are “perhaps the most stringent ever imposed on a financial institution.” Cruz, who has complied more than 1000 hours of evidence and secretly recorded audio, had a far more accurate assessment. He called the fine “a joke” and further revealed the arrogance of the people involved. “The auditors warned me investigating the money laundering could cost me my job,” he said. “The auditors told me in 2009 that nobody in the bank was going to go to jail and that HSBC had already put aside $2 billion in reserves to pay the fine they somehow had reason to suspect back then that the Department of Justice would demand to settle the case.”

How many strikes do you need Republicans? Nominate this woman and the message is clear: it’s business as usual – no matter how corrupt and despicable.

Issue two is even more straightforward. Right now Democrats are holding up a bill aimed at defunding the portion of the Department of Homeland Security’s budget that will facilitate the implementation of Obama’s order granting de facto amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal aliens. The reason they can hold it up is because Republicans are honoring Senate “tradition” requiring 60 votes, rather than a simple majority of 51, to end a filibuster. Senate Democrats, who have blocked it from advancing three times, have a very simple agenda: force the GOP to cave, or blame them for the government shutdown that would ensue if they don’t.

Anyone remember that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) trashed that tradition in 2013, so he could pack the the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the second most powerful court in the nation, with leftist judges? Charles Krauthammer did. “In the fourth quarter of his presidency, Obama unbound is abusing presidential authority at will to secure a legacy on everything from environmental regulation to immigration, the laws of which he would unilaterally suspend,” he writes.

His solution for the current impasse? One that Republicans ignore at their peril. “Go bold. Go nuclear. Abolish the filibuster. Pass the bill and send it to the president,” Krauthammer insists. Spot on with a bullet. Let Obama veto it, which as Krauthammer, notes changes the narrative from the GOP shutting down government to “Obama vetoes funding for DHS, threatening to shut it down.” Yet it gets better:

“But filibuster abolition is more than a one-shot proposition. It would radically change the next two years. It would give Republicans full control of the Congress and allow swift passage of a GOP agenda. It would also clarify the antagonists: a lawless president vs. a willful Congress. The GOP could be sending bill after bill to the president’s desk — on tax reform, trade, Obamacare and, if it has the guts, immigration. Obama’s choice? Sign, veto or negotiate a compromise. If he vetoes, then Republicans take that issue to the country in 2016.”

A no-brainer idea, right? Not so far. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is on the record as saying the GOP will not engage in any more government shutdowns, and the media will be more than happy to accommodate the Democrat narrative, regardless of reality. Moreover, Republicans have a built-in excuse to cave: U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision to stay Obama’s amnesty program, for fundamentally legitimate reasons. “The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle,” Hanen wrote, further explaining that legalizing millions of illegal aliens is a “virtually irreversible” action.

Unfortunately, hiding behind that ruling won’t fly because the White House has already filed an appeal to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and a request for an immediate stay of his own injunction from Hanen. In court papers the DHS and the DOJ had the unmitigated gall to say that maintaining the current status quo would be a “hardship” for illegals – because it would deny them lawful status for three years, work permits, Social Security numbers, the right to travel and the right to get a drivers’ licenses. And if either entity overturns that ruling, Attorney General Eric Holder is “confident” the issue will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court. No doubt. But if the stay is overturned, is there the slightest doubt the Obama administration will not only move forward with reckless abandon, but subsequently argue, along with their media apparatchiks, that it would be “inhumane” for a “radicalized” Supreme Court to undo what has already occurred on the ground?

Sorry, GOP. Anything, including a government shutdown, is better that allowing America'a descent into Third World-ism, and the not so subtle attempt to transform the Democrat party into an unassailable power, courtesy of illegals who will be granted the right to vote as soon as Democrats can get away with it. It is exactly that descent into Third World-ism you were elected to prevent.

Hence, it’s now or never. And if you decide to pass, people like me are through with you. Furthermore, this writer will continue to advocate for a third political party engineered by a group resignation of GOP conservatives. Conservatives who will form the foundation of that third party. A group with built in name recognition, proven winners, intact campaign apparatuses and a concise message in defense of American exceptionalism, Constitutional fealty and fiscal prudence. Millions of Americans have had their fill of voting for the lesser of two evils, and they have no interest in abiding another radical attorney general, or the inevitable degradation that accompanies the extermination of the rule of law in favor of political expediency. Illegal is illegal, and you either stand with that and your fellow Americans – and tell your Chamber of Commerce buddies to stuff it in the process – or we will no longer stand with you.

We may get Hillary Clinton shoved down our throats in 2016 as a result, but better a third party light at the end of a political tunnel than a choice between Democrat and Democrat-lite forever. Two issues, GOP. As make or break as it gets.

Sincerely,
Arnold Ahlert

The Patriot Post® · The GOP Will Stand or Fall on These Two Issues