Dakota Beacon

I just got this note from Kevin Cramer (telling us that the budget resolution is just a "short-term solution") in my email.  You probably did too.  He is telling us that while he voted to fund Obamacare in order to “open” the federal government, the debt remains and we must address it.  How, I wonder, when people like Cramer are voting to fund such programs as Obamacare?  Where is his integrity?  And no, not ALL Republican Congressmen voted this way.  Some showed that they could be trusted and held firm to the principles for which we thought we were electing them.  Kevin Cramer, though, showed himself to be either a coward, an opportunist more interested in his committee appointments and favors from Boehner than in principle, or an idiot.  I don’t think he’s an idiot, but I believe he thinks we are.  There was no better time, nor no better ground to fight this on.  We had public opinion, the display of incompetence by the Obamacare “rollout” and a Constitutional means and plan to address it.  How are we to see our government run in future?  Any time Obama wants something, however unconstitutional, no matter how damaging to America, all he has to do is engineer some kind of “shutdown”.  He believes, as does Cramer, that we will sell our souls and our children’s future and our ancestor’s blood in order to open parks and facilitate picture-taking of the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore.  I am embarrassed for America and particularly for Cramer.  He was the only Conservative North Dakota had.  Or thought we had. 

In my response to Cramer I said I would support any Democrat who runs against him next year.  I mean that, and not out of spite or anger.  I say this because if we do not do this – clean up the Republican Party – we are doomed either to one party or three.  There is no reason to go to the polls and end up in the jury pool just so that we can support someone who betrays us and supports Harry Reid instead.  I’d rather one of theirs did this, not one of “ours”.  This is why Americans do not honor Benedict Arnold, even though he also started out as a patriot. 

We should not be surprised that John Hoeven supported Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell instead of Ted Cruz.  After all, we know he is a Democrat who simply found he could win easier as a “Republican”.  But we had a right to expect far more from Cramer. 

The only way to restore the Republican Party is to actively support in every way the opponents of the other party when a “Republican” has crossed that important line.  No sane person would argue that the government “shutdown” would be as impossible to cope with for Americans as Obamacare, but Cramer voted that way.  He talks vacuously about “important issues to get on with” like amnesty.  Well, we’ll get that too.  But even that was not as crucial as Obamacare.  There is no return from this.

For those who adhere to the “fight another day” “strategy”, I can only say this.  Americans hate the IRS.  We have hated it forever.  One might have argued that once its full effect became known, Americans would demand its repeal.  Some have.  But today the IRS is 100 years old and counting. In fact, the IRS is now in charge of your healthcare.  And Cramer helped that happen.  His earlier votes to “repeal” he knew were just rhetoric.  This vote, though, was REAL.   There IS no argument that we will get rid of something once we decide it’s no good.  That does not happen.  It becomes part of the fabric of our every day.  So will Obamacare and the rationing and the cost and the lost jobs and industries and professional care providers.  We will get used to it.  Apparently the Cubans and the British have.  So will we.  It’s part of Obama’s plan to downgrade our standard of living, to bring us down to the level of undeveloped countries in sub-Saharan Africa, rather than give them an example of how to achieve a better life.  And Kevin Cramer is one of his collaborators.  There WAS a choice, but Cramer chose to support the so-called “possible” – and that was Obamacare.  He ignored the Constitutional power he and others in Congress were given and with which he was entrusted by the voters.  He betrayed everything we sent him to Congress to help accomplish.  He took the other side.  So must we.  If Democrats are good enough for Cramer, they should be good enough for us.  One term by a Democrat will clean up this wretched party perhaps and we can concentrate on electing a REAL Conservative next time, in 2016.  Or Cramer could do the honorable thing and step down of his own accord.  But we should not vote for him again if we don’t want to see this repulsive scenario re-enacted with the next “important” vote.  This one was the big one.  Nothing else will really matter.  Now we’re just left to watch them re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic after they’ve taken the ship off course and into the iceberg.  It’s all over now.  The reason is that we had no party of opposition to Obama policy.  The only way to fix it is to restore the party and the only way to do that is to stop supporting collaborators such as Kevin Cramer.  There are better people.  We must simply take out the failures like Cramer and replace them with stand-in Democrats until we can elect those better people.  Or, as I said, Cramer could just get out of the way.  That would be desirable.

I have said as much to Cramer.  I’m sending my message to him along with this email.  My chief concern is that we stop depending upon people who are okay with selling us out, and no other construction can possibly be put upon his vote.  I know he wasn’t alone – he had a lot of company.  Men like McCain, Cantor, McConnell and the like.  Even erstwhile “Conservatives” like failed VP candidate Paul Ryan. 

The first thing we must do in order to triumph is to know our enemy.  We need to recognize who is on our team and who is on the other one.  There are only two sides to any coin.  Obama is on one.  Who is on the other?

This vote will continue to haunt us – Cramer himself admits we have a $17 trillion debt.  THAT IS BEFORE Obamacare even starts.  This program will exponentially increase that debt and make it more impossible every day for us to ever balance the books again.  And he voted to fund that and now he’s talking about dealing with the debt.  What’s wrong with this picture?  Cramer is either talking through some kind of stupor or he’s just a simple hypocrite - lying to us - and couldn’t care less.

We have done our part.  We have dutifully participated in the process.  Many of us attended our state conventions.  We went to the polls.  We voted in the primary and the general election.  We stuffed envelopes.  We went door-to-door.  We manned phones, we took others to the polls.   I realize my suggestion is draconian.  It represents the last possible option, however, to gain influence within our own party.  We need to punish those who vote with socialists in Congress and support those who oppose them.  If that means electing a Democrat for one term, let’s do it.  Then perhaps the next person we elect will learn.  One might have thought Rick Berg’s experience would have been instructive.  The lesson is hard-learned.  We must be persistent and consistent.  Anyone who votes wrong on what we know to be the most important vote in the session must be dumped. 

The collaborators have left us no better option.