December 30, 2015 at 2:27 p.m.
Is this the end of the Republican Party?
Is this the end of the Republican Party?
He was, of course, discussing congressional passage of an omnibus spending bill to fund the government through next year, a $1.1-trillion goliath that ran on for more than 2,000 pages.
As that description indicates, it was a manifesto of Big Government, a ratification of the platform of the Democratic Party. After all, when it takes 2,000 pages to lay down all the ways you are going to spend taxpayer dollars, you know it's an automatic set piece for the bureaucracy.
And it was passed by Republicans, who have solid majorities in both the U.S. House and in the U.S. Senate.
This isn't the way political life was supposed to be after Republicans swept the 2014 mid-term elections. Those elections were widely seen as a repudiation of Democratic Party policies.
Indeed, candidates promised to pass bill after bill to restore conservative policies. At the very least, when President Obama vetoed them, Republicans could run against those recorded vetoes in the 2016 elections, and they could put Hillary Clinton's feet to the fire by forcing her to embrace or repudiate a very distinct liberal agenda.
Instead, not even the Republicans repudiated it. They passed the Democratic agenda without a whimper. Not only that, it was complete surrender. They didn't negotiate. They didn't compromise. They gave Democrats everything, and got virtually nothing in return.
For example, the bill funds Obama's 2012 executive amnesty for illegal immigrants who came to the country as minors, not to mention work permits and federal benefits for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
The Paul Ryan bill funds sanctuary cities. It funds all refugee resettlement programs. It ratifies the elimination of spending caps, which will increase spending next year by billions of dollars. And on and on - a wonderful package of Christmas presents for Democrats, most of whom don't even like Christmas.
Here's how Limbaugh put the GOP budget deal: "And now the Republicans have the largest number of seats in the House they've had in Congress since the Civil War. And it hasn't made any difference at all. It is as though Nancy Pelosi is still running the House and Harry Reid is still running the Senate. 'Betrayed' is not even the word here. What has happened here is worse than betrayal. Betrayal is pretty bad, but it's worse than that. ... [W]e don't even need a Republican Party if they're gonna do this. You know, just elect Democrats, disband the Republican Party, and let the Democrats run it, because that's what's happening anyway."
Limbaugh wasn't the only one trying to get his head around the magnitude of the treason against conservatism and the constitution. The Rev. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, resigned from the Republican Party, in particular because, oh yeah, the omnibus bill also fully funded Planned Parenthood.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions said the vote explained why voters are in "open rebellion."
To be fair, some conservative members of Congress, such as Sessions, voted against the bill. And most of the GOP presidential candidates are not on the same page as their congressional GOP counterparts.
The problem is, it's the GOP Congress that holds the nation's purse strings. It's the GOP Congress that is actually voting on policy, as opposed to the presidential candidates' statements about what they would or wouldn't do.
So, if we are to seek out the true nature of the Republican philosophy, we are compelled to look at what the Republican Congress just did, not to what the candidates say they will do.
Once again, we have to conclude that the GOP establishment - which is apparently no different from the Democratic establishment - prevailed. Once again, voters who so desperately want and hope for change have been denied.
To say all this another way, it is now nearly impossible for the GOP to field a candidate who can provide a compelling contrast to the Democrats, unless that candidate is Donald Trump. The Republicans simply cannot offer change in the presidential race when the GOP Congress just ratified the Democratic status quo.
Conservative voters have been lied to repeatedly, and they just can't be expected to believe empty promises about the future. Paul Ryan may have just delivered the White House to the Clintons.
That's bad for the Republic, and even worse for the GOP. Voters who don't get results at the ballot box may soon vote with their feet, and they may - as Limbaugh suggested - abandon and disband the Republican Party.
Conservatives often point to blacks as a chained constituency enslaved by the Democratic Party's policies of dependence. But are conservatives any less chained to the Republican Party, enslaved by their vows of fidelity to a repeatedly unfaithful party?
Conservatives aren't particularly enamored with the idea of divorce, but at long last many must be contemplating it now after the GOP's unseemly affair with the Democrats.
We take no position on that. But, whatever the course, whether with a new party or by mobilizing within the current party, change is urgently necessary. We need to know if Republican powers will ever stand up for conservative principles.
The fight is on, and it is for all the marbles. Just know that the powers-that-be inside the GOP are on the other side, not the conservative side, and they just proved it again with their Big Government extravaganza.
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