The immediately preceding post here at LITD got into the fissures that suggest a bipartisan package deal combining border measures and Ukraine aid is in peril, with a focus on Mitch McConnell's cowardice and cynicism.
The matter continues to get more pathetic, with a group of ate-up yay-hoos organizing a trucker convoy to travel to three points along the border to make a statement about the "globalists" and proclaim that God takes an unambiguous stand on the issue.
The cynicism now clearly extends to the top of the not-so-grand old party, with the Very Stable Genius asking anyone concerned with a stall in a solution to "please blame it on me." His thinking is that such blame launches a narrative in which he alone can come up with the golden remedy, just like the way he'd end the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 24 hours.
States are now squaring off against the federal government over the matter.
It's not as if the Biden administration deserves any cutting of slack. It has handled the illegal immigration issue abysmally, and even Democrat big-city mayors are insisting that the administration get serious, so that immigrants quit arriving on buses and finding miserable circumstances. There are also the human trafficking and fentanyl elements. Probably a terrorism element as well, which may fully present itself in ways we don't want to imagine.
A lot of Democratic fecklessness stems from the fact that the always-automatically-ascribe-unassailable-virtue-to-those-from-the-global-south wing drives everything about that party's policy orientation. Perhaps the best-crystallized display of the self-congratulation behind this bias is the moment when AOC put on a crying jag at the border fence.
I have always thought it was ill-advised to package a major domestic issue (the border) with a pressing foreign-policy concern (Ukraine), but Capitol Hill dynamics often result in awkward legislative bundles.
Republican wack jobs like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Matt Gaetz have made Ukraine aid a matter of "principle," calling that West-friendly country's desperate attempt to roll back the brazen aggression inflicted on it by its neighbor a waste of taxpayer dollars. Those in that camp often cite the corruption problems Ukraine has dealt with since its 1991 independence. Their hope is that those willing to give them an airing will not look at the big picture: Zelensky's understanding that those he's trying to weed out of his government for skimming money and war materiel are stymying his and the nation's ability to set things aright. They're traitors, in a word.
If it seems like I'm going back and forth between Republican and Democratic transgressions, it's because I want to make it clear that I take no side in this year's election cycle. I don't give a flying diddly who gets elected president or to my city council.
All I'm standing for is seeing that tried and true fusionist conservatism gets an airing.
David Corn, a well-credentialed lefty columnist, has a piece today that demonstrates how hard it is for most observers - of his stripe or the Trumpisst stripe - to keep an agenda out of their assessments of the lay of the land.
He accurately paints the picture of who the players are, with a focus on Never Trumpers. But when he takes his scalpel to the distinction between types pf Never Trumpers - Bill Kristol types on th one hand, who are going to vote for Biden because "binary choice," and those who are going to fold and kiss the ring of the Very Stable Genius - he shows his hand.
David, there's another type: me.
I refuse to have any truck with the drool-besotted leg-humpers of my former party. I come from a red state, but one with a reputation for its Republicans generally avoiding the yay-hoo vibe. But that era appears to have ended. Both major candidates for governor are dead to me.
But on the other hand, I will never abide by the hatred for human advancement, comfort, convenience and safety that drives the Democratic Party, nor its militant identity politics, nor its penchant for wealth redistribution.
Furthermore, I will not take the bait and engage in any kind of argument catalyzed by an are-you-saying-that-stuff-is-as-bad-as-trying-to-prevent-a-Constitutional-transfer-of-power type challenge.
I will not choose between poisons.
I am staying home for both my state's primary in May and the general election in November, and I will tell you that you should, too.
It's the only moral choice.
This isn't the first time I've spelled out this position, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
But I honestly can't see how anyone who likes to sleep well at night can proceed otherwise.
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