Dakota Beacon

Right now Congress is in recess.  Our Representatives and Senators are, presumably, back home connecting with the people who trusted them and put them in office.   It is most sincerely to be hoped that these constituents will button-hole these legislators and give them a few important messages.  Get to your town halls, attend your rallies, call them (yes, even during recess) and tell them what you expect them to do and demand that they show leadership.  I’ll speak on one of these issues today and tomorrow on another.

We hear every day that the Republican Party is divided on “how” to get rid of Obamacare.  There is little discussion on Main Street or in rural America in favor of keeping and implementing this – less every day.  At this stage of things it has not been implemented.  Yet not only its original opponents but even those who were actively promoting this train wreck are seeing it for what it is.  Labor unions want rid of it.  Howard Dean wants rid of it.  It’s not a few “right wing wacko birds” who are literally SCREAMING to stop this horror before it’s too late.  We know now - all of us – that this one program alone will destroy what is left of our faltering economy.  It will cause businesses to downsize and put workers either on a part-time, two- or three-job merry-go-round nightmare, or shut them down altogether.  It will prevent many entrepreneurs from starting businesses.  It will cost taxpayers more than they now have to pay and expect them to pay for it with less.  Those “fortunate” few who keep their employers’ insurance will probably see a huge increase in their participation cost and fewer, if any, other family members included in the coverage. 

We all know that health care quality and availability will sharply decline, because we are beginning to see people leaving the medical profession already.  The peripheral businesses, those which develop cures and treatments and equipment for medical care will begin to fail or shut down.  The medical advances we might have seen, might have been on the verge of breaking through, will just not happen.  Those involved in these industries will lose their employment while all of us will lose their expertise, commitment and the great potential of their work. 

Obamacare isn’t just about our healthcare, either.  It also empowers the IRS to take charge.  After the disclosures about that agency, few of us want any more of them or any more power in their hands.  Let’s take a count of hands – how many of you want the IRS involved in YOUR healthcare?  Or should we have an independent system of death panels?  It appears as though we’ll have layers of other people deciding our fate under Obamacare.

It will require us to provide this “benefit” – at huge cost – to illegals.  These lawbreakers are now demanding organ transplants.  And by the way, who do YOU think will go to the front of the line for health care with our system officially politicized?  What’s not to love?  Is it any wonder that Americans who want to find or keep their jobs, some of the money they earn, the right to the healthcare and insurance of their choice and the IRS out of their personal lives, are alarmed at the impending implementation of this truly horrific program which will bankrupt us as a nation as well as individuals and families while it effectively denies us choice and care?  Most of us will eventually get older.  As we do, will we find comfort in Mr. Obama’s insistence that we settle for the “pain pill”?  The adorable little dragon that hatched out of that egg in 2009 that some Americans cherished at the time has begun to show its full-grown size, its fangs and its dangerous and threatening nature.

So, as we now stand, Americans are gathering in opposition to Obamacare much as the Scots gathered around William Wallace.  If you saw Braveheart you will likely never forget that scene . . . the one where the nobles were prepared to abandon them when they saw Longshanks’ legions, but the people of Scotland would not let them lead them back to their former servitude.  Thus was born the reign of Robert Bruce.  He was finally moved to become a leader rather than the “wait-and-seer” his father hoped he would be.  The leaders are what we are missing here.  We have a few – Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and a handful of others- but we need the rest to join them.

The argument they give us who wish not to lead here is that they think their “chances” will be better in 2014, when we supposedly have a “Republican Senate”.  Forgive me, believers, but this is like Charlie Brown waiting for the Great Pumpkin, or watching for the appearance of the next unicorn.  This is a weakling’s argument.  When would be a better time than now – before we have become irrevocably trapped in the program, before it creates its maximum damage to our economy, while we have both Republican conservatives and union Democrats in the same column – the “no” column?  The failure to act swiftly and decisively at this moment to defund this creature of hell is nothing but cowardice.  It can be carefully made up to create the illusion of “prudence” or cleverness, but this is not the time for caution or legislators who are too sophisticated to act forthrightly and with courage now. 

As he so often did, William Shakespeare cut right to the core of these matters in JuliusCaesar.  There was that famous conversation between Cassius and Brutus, who were weighing what must be done to counter the violation of the moral compact with the people by Julius Caesar.

Cassius: This it is:

'Tis better that the enemy seek us.

So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,

Doing himself offense, whilst we, lying still,

Are full of rest, defense, and nimbleness.

(In other words, better to wait for a “Republican Senate” in 2014.)

Brutus: Under your pardon. You must note beside,

That we have tried the utmost of our friends,

Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe.

The enemy increaseth every day.

We, at the height, are ready to decline.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves

Or lose our ventures.

(In other words, we have nearly everyone but Washington bureaucrats with us NOW.  This is the time to draw a line and have the fight.)

There really IS a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.  What some of our overly cautious “leaders” (are you listening, Mr. Cramer?) fail to grasp is that if the willingness to defund this program is not there now, when the people are urging it, there will be a grave consequence in 2014.  Remember when the energy of the tea party movement put most of these Republicans in office – way back in 2010?  We turned the Congress over to Republicans for one basic reason:  we wanted them to kill Obamacare.  (A few other things, too, like the ban on incandescent light bulbs, and where did that go?)  So far they have unequivocally failed miserably to undo anything they were sent there to undo.  Republicans have shown their willingness to betray the people who sent them there.  The result could well be a further drift away by the base, the conservatives, who can see the disaster looming and can no longer support the diddling, dawdling mugwumps .  It might mean a third party, it might mean a reinforcement of the Democrats, it might even mean revolution.  It will surely mean that these Republicans who fail to act now will be a part of the implementation of Obamacare – they will own it.  On the other hand, the Big Bad Wolf of a government shut-down will also be owned by the Democrats if Republicans act firmly now.

They could strike now to defund it.  It might not succeed 100% because of Democrats in the Senate.  Would these Republican leaders prefer to own this or should they desire the Democrats to bear the responsibility?  It does not matter any longer who passed it.  It is passed again every day by the failure of its supposed opponents to stop it – by repeal, by defunding or by whatever means is available.  Obama must be heartened by the weakness demonstrated by Republican leaders.  Those who echo Kevin Cramer’s tentativeness, strengthen those who would ruin America. 

At this moment we have support for defunding and the mechanism for doing so.  The continuing resolution for funding government is up for renewal.  It will be voted on soon after the August recess.  We will either see some leadership and some fortitude in our Congress and the will to accept the responsibility along with the perks of being a Congressman.  There will either be a stand taken and a refusal to fund this part of government and the gigantic increase in government (and I don’t mean just the IRS) . . . or there will be the waffling and wavering that Obama and his henchmen have come to expect of this Congress and its failed leaders.  Acquiescence or a line in the sand.  Now.  This isn’t about “strategy”.  It is about courage.

I hope that those who want this beast killed will call their Congressmen and Senators and lay it out for them:  promise a vote against every single member who does NOT vote to defund Obamacare, regardless of party affiliation.  Our representatives will either do Obama’s work for him or they will be working for US.  Perhaps if they understand what we understand and come to realize that this is really their moment to do or die, they may develop a backbone.  As Ronald Reagan once said, “If not us, who?  If not now, when?”  There will not be a better time to undo this damage.  The time is now.  It might well be the only time.

Sally Morris is a member of Americans for Constitutional Government and the Valley Tea Party Conservative Coalition.  Visit her website at fromtherampart.webs.com, for news, views, Tim Lund's cartoons, history and American culture.