Dakota Beacon

As the year comes to an end it’s time to take a critical look at what North Dakota’s delegation to Washington has accomplished, what they said they’d do, what they did and what they didn’t do.

We don’t need to look too closely at Senator Heidi Heitkamp – she ran as a Democrat, she believes in Big Government, she made no real bones about it, despite throwing one here and there to the gun rights lobby.  North Dakota elected a Democrat and she’s acting, talking and voting like one.  Fair enough.  That one is the voters’ collective fault.

North Dakota’s other Senator, John Hoeven, is another matter.  He was foisted off on the Republican voters as a “Republican”, even though, according to his own statements read in the Grand Forks Herald, Hoeven regarded himself as a Democrat . . . until his innate opportunism directed him to declare that he was available to hold office as a Republican.  He stated that his mentors were Byron Dorgan and his colleague in the Senate, Heidi Heitkamp.  Nothing he has done since has persuaded us that he is anything but a Democrat – just the “R” he appended after his name.  We remain confounded that the Republican Party in a “red” state like North Dakota finds itself casting a Democrat as a Republican, but there you go – the Republican Party of North Dakota is either party-confused or deliberately conniving to deprive its base of a real Republican to support.  No one who has been paying attention should be surprised that Hoeven is ranked near the bottom of Republican Senators by Conservative organizations.  Among Senators, he has a paltry 43% Conservative voting record (Heritage).

The really big story, the big news, the unexpected surprise, is the performance of Congressman Kevin Cramer.  When Cramer was invited to run by two geographically disparate Tea Party organizations in the state (Valley Tea Party Conservative Coalition in Grand Forks and Williston’s Tea Party group), he was regarded as a seasoned Conservative, experienced in the battles with the EPA within the state, well-known as a loyal Republican through his long and deep involvement with the party, even so far as to become the State Republican Chairman.  When he finally announced (on Halloween, 2011) that he would run for the House seat, he was lauded as the Great Hope of Conservatism. 

We cheered him on when he departed from tradition and refused to compete in the arena of the State Republican Convention of 2012, to run against that party’s nominee in the primary.  To the surprise of very few he prevailed in the primary against the Republicans’ endorsed candidate.  He held great promise and inspired our trust.  His words resounded – we sent him to Washington to help the clean-up, to help hold the line on the budget . . . most of all to fight Obamacare, tooth and nail.

Now, just over a year after his triumphant election, what do we see?  Not the stalwart, fearless fighter, not the wise budget-watcher.  Not the man who was going to fight Obamacare and help shut it down.  We see a little man who, when he got to Washington, set about making the “right connections” to advance himself with the influential so-called “leaders” – such people as John Boehner, Eric Cantor.

Perhaps it was a desire to get into the club’s tree house, perhaps it was just that he lied to us and never really cared about the vital issues on which he ran and was elected.  But we’ve seen his pandering to these “leaders” pay off not in progress against the juggernaut of Big Government, the monster of Obamacare, but in currying favor to get in on trips to Israel with Eric Cantor, to bring Cantor to North Dakota’s Bakken fields for a childish “show-and-tell” trip.  He even made a fool of himself by inviting Obama himself to come and see the wonderful resources Obama has vowed to shut down.  Maybe while he was here he could focus on shutting down lignite as well.  Fortunately, Cramer was publicly humiliated by Obama’s refusal even to come.

Meanwhile, back In Washington, he has voted to fund Obamacare, through the infamous “Continuing Resolution” vote.  And yes, he DID.  I emphasize this because when he called in for his weekly session on radio back in North Dakota, Cramer told us that he “never voted to fund Obamacare”.  No, he didn’t.  He just voted for a Continuing Resolution that funded it.  Ha, ha.  It wasn’t enough that he betrayed us, he had to go on to lie to us and he did that in a way that left no doubt as to the contempt in which he holds the people who voted for him.  He obviously thinks we’re idiots.

After he made this radio “appearance”, he went right back to work and voted to support a two-year extension of that funding.  This means that Conservatives have NO LEVERAGE in the future to stop this horror.  Now, if you are worried about how you and your family will cope with Obamacare and the threat it poses to your pocketbook and your healthcare, think about those who have already been struck down by this since Cramer voted to support it.  Think of the people who have received their termination letters from their insurance companies. 

These include many who have paid premiums for 30 or 40 years just so that if they became ill or injured there would be support for their recovery.  People who were young and healthy when they began paying these premiums, who are now older, perhaps ill with life-threatening disease.  People in treatment for cancer, and that treatment now interrupted.  People who have doctors they trust, who know their cases and medical history.  Treatment is interrupted, perhaps with fatal results, because no one even knows where to turn for healthcare or for insurance.  Some of these people will die.  This might have been averted had a strong Congress refused to enable this evil, Obamacare.  This blood is now on Cramer’s hands, just as it is on Obama’s.  Cramer owns Obamacare.  He could have stood with Michele Bachmann.  Instead he stood with his new friends, Cantor and Boehner. 

There is no doubt now as to just what Cramer is.  He is a traitor to the principles we thought he would champion.  He is a liar who holds his audience in contempt, who values his Washington society above the hicks back home, the ones he fools with prayer breakfasts and quotes from scripture, the ones whose intelligence and honor he insults.  He is without grace, loyalty, courage or honor.  But he has made “important” friends, though.  There’s that.

The big question is not what Cramer is, but what North Dakota voters will do about it.  There will be many, of course, who lack the commitment to America or to their own children, to throw down the gauntlet.  These pale “Republicans” will support anything that can claim to be a “Republican incumbent” whether it is Cramer or the Cat in the Hat.  These are the people who will urge “party unity” and warn against “destructive Tea Party ‘types’” who oppose this kind of sellout.  But we must hope there will be others – men and women who DO care about their children and the future of their country more than they do about the approval of the RINOs who run the organization.  We must hope that these people will say “NO MORE” and will seek another candidate for the U.S. House seat.

When North Dakota’s last Congressman, Rick Berg, let us all down by voting for more spending, more bailouts, voters refused to support him for the Senate.  Had he remained in Congress or been elected to the Senate, we could have expected just exactly what Heidi Heitkamp, John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer have given us.  Berg could have gone back to Washington, full of himself with reelection in his pocket and we would have deserved it for reelecting someone we already knew would vote for Big Government.  There is no reason to believe that a Senator Berg would have been one iota different from a Senator Hoeven . . . who is no different from Senator Heitkamp.  If our elections are to mean anything at all, we must use them to instruct those who are yet to come – that we will not tolerate betrayal, that we are not impressed with being insulted.  That the one who sells us out will not return to Congress.

The big dilemma for Republican voters has been that we no longer have any real two-party system in America.  We surely don’t seem to in North Dakota either.  The people who hold the reins of party politics have told us to go soak our collective head and let them run things their way.  They have done this with increasingly disastrous results for about 40 years now.  In that time of Republican voters “holding their noses” and pulling the lever for the Party Ticket, no questions asked, America has drifted way out to sea.   What would have been considered something to go to war over in Cuba or Hungary or South Vietnam is now cordially agreed to by Republican Senators and Congressmen over cocktails, or in some cases, a glass of milk.  Where do we go?

We must go back to principles – the founding principles for which we went to war and established our nation through revolution.  We must forget about the letters after the names.  A Democrat with an “R” after his name is no better than one with a “D” after his name.  These labels used to have powerful meaning.  They brought balance and open debate to the issues of the day.  Now they are rendered meaningless by pointless “bi-partisanship” and “compromise” and “the art of the possible”.  There were those who believed, back in 1776, that America was not possible.  What is NOT possible is that we will survive as a nation of free people any longer if we permit this. 

If we give people, little people like Kevin Cramer, our permission to betray us we shall all deserve it.  We should then quit calling in to radio shows or writing letters to the editor or grousing to our friends at the water cooler or over the back fence.  We’re done.  As they say, stick a fork in us.  No.  We must fight back against this betrayal with the only peaceful tool we have – elections.  I don’t mean a third party, by the way.   This is how we turn grassroots power into grass clippings, bagged and tossed out for mulch.  We must restore the TWO-PARTY SYSTEM, not invent another party or several other parties.  We must refuse to allow a Democrat or a weakling to carry a Republican standard to Washington. 

This means a primary fight.  In Cramer’s case, he has either had a premonition or he’s gotten hold of Karl Rove’s talking points White Paper.  On the air recently he harangued against those dupes in the Tea Party movement who were being misled by “groups like Heritage” (who had coincidentally just rated his voting in Congress on a Conservative scale as a pitiful 38%) into putting up challengers in primaries.  His memory seems to have been bedazzled by the glitter of his Washington comrades – he’s forgotten how he got to Washington himself.  But no matter, he figures we won’t notice, being the misled duped hicks we are.  He figures he can just come back home after the session and hold another down-home prayer breakfast, let us know he’s holier than we, that we just need to send him back to buck up the Republican caucus and all that.  His votes, he thinks, won’t matter.   Except, perhaps to those whose healthcare he helped to destroy, whose lives will be inevitably shortened by his actions, and by those who care about those victims.  If we reelect Kevin Cramer, we will have given direct permission for him to support every big spending, Big Government intrusion, every misguided nightmarish idea the Left can conjure.  If we don’t want to do this, we must start now to recruit ONE (not two or three or a dozen) Conservative candidate. 

If all fails, and Cramer gets himself on the ticket as the Republican-endorsed candidate, then we must go for the “nuclear” option – we must vote for his Democrat opponent.  I know this sounds drastic, and indeed, it is, but if Cramer knows – and more importantly, if his Republican successor knows – that we are, in fact, this serious about our country, it might make a real difference.  We can always replace a Democrat next time as well.  Remember, this time around, Cramer’s most important votes were identical to Nancy Pelosi’s.  If we throw Cramer out on his ear the next guy might come to understand that we are paying attention. 

In the mean time, Cramer has made the case for the cynics – he’s proven the real need for the Tea Party activism.  There will be those who will still vote for the proverbial “orange juice can” instead.  This has telegraphed to these weaklings in Congress that they can commit murder of America and get away with it scot free.   But we now see that the Orange Juice Party can deliver Obamacare as effectively as the Democrat Party can. 

If we subscribe to the Orange Juice philosophy, the result is that guys like Cramer will realize that there is no way he can go “too far” to the Left.  If he wants to keep his cushy Washington office all he needs to do is curry favor with the Progressives.  Only they, after all - according to tradition, anyway - will send him packing.  They do this regularly with Conservatives.  They refuse to support THEM.  Conservatives, on the other hand, they believe, will come to heel upon exhort ion to “support the Party”.  So, if we buy into the Karl Rove philosophy, why even go to the polls?  In the famous last (we hope) words of Hilary Clinton, “What difference does it make?”  In the end it IS up to us.