Why Won’t Congress Do What I Want?

That’s the question that’s burning up, that’s literally on fire at many of the so-called “progressive” – liberal – chatterbox blogs these days.  It’s an interesting question, actually, because Democrats were recently elected to a majority in Congress based primarily on the fact that they weren’t Republicans.

So why won’t the Dems do the things they said they would do when they were on the campaign trail?  And why won’t they do the things that their most motivated constituents, the progressive liberal kids, want them to do?

The answers to these questions are very different.  Indeed, though they seem very similar, these are two entirely different questions.

Yesterday’s Promise

Congress’ approval rating is now at an all time low of 27%.  Why?  Because the Dems took over with the American people already unhappy at the way Republicans were running the institution and made a bad thing worse.

How?  The usual way – by failing to live up to their promises.  Dems most recent trail of tears includes but is not limited to:

• Not stopping the war in Iraq
• Not bringing the troops home
• Not appointing ethical leadership
• Not being fiscally responsible
• Not enforcing more open, accountable government
• Not reforming immigration
• Not reforming health care
• Not passing stem cell research (damn veto powers!)
• Not engaging in bi-partisan politics
• Not refraining from anti-Bush witch hunts

Democrats at various levels promised to do all of these things once they were elected.  Of course most of these promises were never going to be kept.  We should have known that, Dems say with a knowing wink.  Shame on you for getting fooled again.

I admit that I felt a certain sense of justification when the Dems won the election.  Like many others I’d seen it coming and even felt like it was necessary.  Sometimes you have to tear down before you can build again.  Unfortunately Pelosi and Co. did not tear down at all.  They simply grafted their new, no-better-than-the-other-guys leadership onto Congress’ already listing superstructure.

One could see that this was happening immediately during Pelosi’s first no-win situation, the House Majority Leader race between Stoyer and Murtha, two bad choices if ever I saw them.

In fact, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington listed Murtha in its report, “Beyond DeLay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and five to watch).”

As reported in the study and by the news media, Murtha has been involved in a number of pay-to-play schemes involving former staffers and his brother

Yet he was endorsed by Nancy Pelosi for a leadership position.  More of the same indeed.

Democrats, in other words, have not changed their political or ideological stripes from the ones that were so roundly rejected during the Clinton years when the Republic revolution took place.

Small wonder then that the American people do not approve of the job they are doing.  They/we have never approved of the tax-and-spend liberal platform; 2007 is no different than 1987 or 1997 in that regard.  This, ultimately is the Dems’ downfall:  people simply don’t like their ideas.

“But We Want Them Anyway”

Liberals refuse to accept that the majority of Americans reject their policies.  It’s difficult medicine to take.  No one likes to hear that their baby is ugly.  But liberal positions on abortion, taxation, wealth redistribution, immigration, and Iraq are bad positions. 

Yet the Democrats were elected anyway.  So why aren’t they doing what the progressive element of their party is so busy agitating for? 

The prototypical example of this non-implementation of the progressive agenda is seen in the Dems inaction on Iraq.  Democrats were elected largely because they weren’t Republicans and said they would pull American troops out of Iraq.

This, of course, was a lie.  Dems have no intention to pull out of Iraq because they understand that doing so would be the absolute height of irresponsibility.

In a way, being elected to the majority was a bad things for Dems because that forces them to accept responsibility for their rhetoric, something they did not have to do when Republicans were in charge.  This is a problem because their words, particularly about Iraq, were and are utterly empty.

Ultra-liberal positions on abortion – “we have the right to kill up to the moment of birth” – and fiscal policy – “we have the right to take wealthy people’s money and use it as we see fit” – are equally irresponsible.  Progressive policies cannot be implemented, even by Democrats, because they are bad ideas. 

What the progressive platform really is about is mob rule.  It’s about creating a perception of injustice – climate change, for example – and rallying the mob around the new idol while telling them repeatedly how important it is to worship it.

But while the idealists at the microphone have their agenda and a certain about of knowledge about the subject of their idolization, the mob knows nothing of science, politics, or even war.  Mobs know destruction and murder, not justice, as in this case in Austin, Texas:

An angry crowd beat a man to death after a vehicle he was riding in struck and injured a young boy in a public housing parking lot, police said Wednesday.

A car in which David Rivas Morales, 40, was a passenger had entered the lot Tuesday night when it struck a 2-year-old child, said Austin Police Commander Harold Piatt. The child was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

There were conflicting accounts of how many people were in the area. Police originally estimated 2,000 to 3,000 in the area and a woman who lives at the complex said hundreds who had been at a Juneteenth festival filled the parking lot and street.

Are these the people who should be managing the war in Iraq, deciding who should pay how much in taxes, and implementing our nation’s immigration policy?  The same people who show up at every G8 conference, ransack the host city, and call it a political rally?  Hardly.

Even the Democratic leadership knows that the progressive element is not fit for leadership.  That’s why their policies do not get implemented.  For this we should all be thankful.