Dakota Beacon

What say we – the Conservatives – target for un-election in 2014 the 87 Republican Congressmen and all of the Republican Senators who voted with the Democrats to fund Obamacare?  How better can we get the point across that we will not tolerate the selling out of our country and our principles, not to mention our prosperity?  We need to get rid of guys like Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor and John Boehner.  If we don’t, we are asking for another RINO presidential candidate in 2016 and a re-affirmation of the policies that are currently destroying us.  After all, wasn’t that the excuse for forging ahead with Obamacare?  “You re-elected Obama in 2012 – that is an affirmation of his policies.”  Even the RINOs have used that one on us, forgetting, conveniently, that his opposition was, in fact, the inventor of the monster – Mitt Romney of Romneycare.  So if we are to establish that we stand in disapproval of the current policies pushed on us by Congress we must (electorally) eradicate those  Congressmen who facilitated it.

What we must acknowledge right here and right now is that Conservatives lost on the day that Mitt Romney was nominated for President.  Everything since has been mere formality playing out.  If we wish to change these outcomes we must first change this.

It is time to begin looking for a replacement for Kevin Cramer for the 2014 Republican ticket.  He has shown us little leadership and less principle since his election in 2012.  No one regrets this more than I – perhaps more than anyone not in his own family (with the exception of funding),  I supported and encouraged his campaign.  Today I am just embarrassed by that effort. 

It is not that Cramer did not have notice that Obamacare was a disaster, nor that he did not hear from his constituents that he should hold the line on the resolution to continue to pay for government programs.  His excuse that he was concerned about getting the government back to work was less than lame.  I doubt that many of the venerable veterans who proudly raised the real flag in battle around the globe during World War II did it so that we could crawl on our knees to keep the parks open.  I doubt that many tourists would be pleased to have Obamacare just so long as they can get a good spot to take a photo of the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore.  What must the honorees of Mount Rushmore think of us?  Even that old Progressive, Teddy Roosevelt, would have found it preposterous that we have a national debt such as this!  He would be ashamed of the whining over the so-called “shutdown” – and he was the most liberal of the bunch!

It was not to get government “back to work” (doesn’t that send a shiver up your spine?) that Cramer caved as he did.  It was because he values his establishment contacts so much more than either common sense or the values of his constituents.  He wants to be on the “right side” of people like Eric Cantor and John Boehner rather than opposing them when they are patently wrong.  We see this behavior always in men like John Hoeven.  We hoped for more spine from Cramer.  He was actually sought out to run because he spent years fighting “Big Government”, as manifest by  the EPA, as well as other federal over-reaching agencies.  Suddenly, he has become weak in the knees.  He looks like a short-pants mini-me playing show and tell with Cantor, traveling about with him.  Now he really plans to impose upon us.  His latest scheme is to show off the oil fields to Barack Obama. 

What a sweet thought!  Obama will really enjoy seeing that.  If he wasn’t already hell-bent on shutting them down, this will move it to the top of his to-do list.  What can this possibly accomplish?  We know Obama to be dedicated to the idea of removing power from the West and placing it in the Third World (on its way to the One-World).  It has never been okay with Obama that America should be energy-independent.  His goal is to rob us of that potential, first through silly “incentives” that give us the likes of Solyndra, and when that’s not enough, he wants to regulate us into oblivion, as the Chinese and other antagonistic nations reap a windfall profit on our foolishness and, let’s just be honest, our nation’s depravity in electing someone whose goal was to destroy us.  But Kevin Cramer can’t wait to play host in the Bakken. 

It is time to find his replacement, for if we support him in the next election, we will have abandoned all hope of a return to smaller government and paid bills and reduced debt.  Because Cramer will never vote for that.  Not as long as he can win Brownie points for voting with Cantor . . . and Pelosi and Waxman and the rest of the ghouls in the Beltway.  He will never – he has proven that this year – stand up to them or stand on his own.  He is a sad disappointment.  It is crucial to find a Conservative to take his place through the primary process if Cramer is unwilling to step aside.  If we do not, the only recourse is to cleanse the party through the general election process and put a Democrat in the House.  If we look at it honestly, that Democrat would have voted with Pelosi and company this time, too, just like Cramer. 

We need to stop looking for the letter after the name.  It is not the letter that goes with the name that will help us or destroy us.  It is the “aye” or the “nay”.  And Cramer’s matched the “D” votes in the most important vote of the session.  Other minor votes, the gestures, like voting to “repeal” Obamacare have no consequence.  Now, really, with respect to our economy and our nation’s very viability, the Obamacare FUNDING was all that mattered this session.  It will haunt us forever now.  When stores close, when we become unemployed, when we lose our homes, our health and perhaps our lives to Obamacare, we must remember that it was Kevin Cramer who helped to give it to us and to fund it with our money.  Certainly Hoeven played a part, but a much more predictable one, inasmuch as most of us knew him to be a Democrat before he found it advantageous to be a “Republican”.  Those Republicans will take anyone these days.

There were 231 Republicans voting on the funding of Obamacare.   One hundred and forty-four of them voted against this monstrosity.  Our Kevin was among a MINORITY of Republicans in the House who voted WITH THE DEMOCRATS on the most crucial vote of the decade – probably the century.  Better he had gone to his picnic in Grand Forks and just missed that vote.