COMPROMISE KILLED LIBERAL IDEALS

Musing about the upcoming disaster of having a Congress with a small Republican majority opened up several interesting thoughts at least, thoughts interesting to me. Over the past six years, we have seen that the Senate, controlled by a slight democratic majority, gets nothing done that favored the liberal agenda. Why is it that we fear a Republican controlled congress will get things done that will favor a right wing agenda thus propels the country further down the road to a plutocracy; government control by the few rich and to hell with working people. It boils down to a single word, ‘compromise’. Compromise is the hallmark of liberalism, which is our strength but it is also our weakness.

Down through the years I have sat on numerous committees controlled by conservatives. I have also sat on many city and university committees controlled by liberals. I know the difference and there was a big difference in how those committees worked. With a conservative chairman; yes, as politically incorrect as the word is it is usually a man, the committees were invariably run by the chair, who was not only the deciding vote but was the only vote; a dictator in miniature. In contrast, liberal chairs run their committee as a democracy with one-person one-vote with the majority winning, a miniature democracy. This is referred to as “committee rules” in contrast to the overall body being run according to written and agreed on rules called Bye Laws, which invariable state in one way or another that the majority rules.

Tragically, our congress has devolved to the level where the chairs of the two chambers run their respective chambers as one big committee controlled by smaller committees; in other words, the overall body runs as a committee. The chairs create all committees according to party lines; this have a choke hold on what happens. The result is dictatorial control when conservatives have the majority, thus the chairmanship; but have compromised controlled when liberals hold the chair. We have seen this in action since the Tea Party radical group took control from figurehead John Boehner by invoking the Hastert rule—nothing passes into law unless there is a Republican majority with complete disregard to liberals. So much for small “d” democracy or in decency in politics.  

In the Senate, which approves presidential appointments, the liberals in control allowed the conservatives to dominate judicial appointments with disastrous results—the +Supreme Court is now a political corrupt organization legislating and not doing what it was supposed to do. Unlike committees in the two chambers, our founding fathers designed the Court to be run by rules of the majority—they wrote the Bye Laws; a majority wins. The only way they could get control of the courts was by insuring the appointing a majority of Republican judges—judgers are not suppose to be biased as either Republican or Democrat. +Karl Rove, the devil in politics, using the power of his position as advisors to a president who could not quit understand how government worked and  funded by the +Koch Brothers and +Sheldon Adelson, changed that by running well-funded campaigns—millions and millions of dollars—for federal judge appointments. Radicals helping radicals and the liberals let them do it by compromise. There was no legislation to prohibit such funding or campaigns—at the time, Adelson had a case that seemed sure to go before the +Supreme Court. For and additional example, +Joe Biden, now Vice President, sat on the senate judicial committee when President H. W. Bush appointed the known most radical of radical Judges, +Clarence Thomas. Biden famously voted for that appointment and said at the time “if the president wanted a conservative judge it was his right to appoint one”, which was the ultimate in compromise.

The conservatives decided they were going to destroy the Obama presidency while waving flags and declaring themselves patriots, and to hell with America; they decided not to do pass any legislation and were successful; the liberals on the committees in the +House of Representatives, the body that approves or disapproves tax money expenditures, had no say—zero. Of course, Republicans were driven by the lust for power, their objective was to gain direct control of everything; sadly, now polls indicate they will gain control of the +Senate, which means they will now be encouraged to do the same thing to gain control of the +White House. The country is in for a nightmare ride.   

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