I give up.

Ten minutes after I started watching the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings Thursday morning, I got so frustrated I started looking for a good cartoon show.

What’s so aggravating about these staged congressional hearings is that you know what the Republicans and the Democrats are going to say before you even turn on the TV.

If it’s health care reform, the right side says it’s going to replace Obamacare with something that works — but then it can’t sell its conservative ideas to the public and it doesn’t have the courage to really try.

Meanwhile, the left side says the right is going to let poor people die or throw grandma off a cliff and that only more socialism will save us — and of course the Big Liberal Media always agrees.

If the hearing is about what ex-FBI Director James Comey did or did not say to President Trump before he was fired, as Thursday’s was in part, we get the usual predictable partisan BS.

Was anyone really surprised that Democrats were against Director Comey and wanted his scalp for, they claim, causing their heroine Hillary to lose the election — right up until the minute President Trump actually fired him?

Now Schumer and the gang are defending Comey, making phony comparisons to Watergate and calling Trump’s quick decision to fire his FBI director somewhere between Nixonian and Hilterian.

The Democrats serving in Congress hate Trump, still can’t believe he was freely elected and want to see him impeached, jailed or worse.

At the same time, it’s become obvious that most members of the Republican majority have no spines and no genuine conservative principles.

Republicans and Democrats in Washington don’t know how to solve anything. They don’t know how to work together toward a common goal for us Americans.

They only know how to work against us, because their only common bipartisan goal is to stay in office.

They’re politicians, first and foremost. They work much harder at self-preservation than they work at helping the rest of the country.

Is it any wonder that every time I sit and watch Congress in action, I say to myself, “Why the heck do I even go to the polls anymore?”

No matter how smart and sensible these people are when we vote for them, when they get to DC they turn into self-serving partisans.

It’s not a joke to say that if one party came up with the cure for cancer, the other party would be against it.

It’s already become clear to me that the only thing that can change in Washington is the White House.

Nothing important is going to be solved in the House and Senate with health care or taxes in the next four years unless Donald Trump stands up and says to Congress, “Get behind me, Satan.”

No one else has the political courage to take a stand on anything, except for Trump.

I used to be bothered by the president not apologizing for his mistakes. Now I appreciate him better.

He’s far from perfect. But at least he has a pair of you-know-whats — which are surely lacking at other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Copyright ©2017 Michael Reagan