The Real Division Of Republicans That We Are Seeing

To begin with, our own Texas Senators are divided on this strategy in the debate over defunding Obamacare. The reticent call the aggressive conservatives inexperienced, hasty, dangerous and divisive. And conservatives consider the reluctant RINOS, liberals, collaborators and cowards. On both sides, most of that talk isn’t true and it isn’t helpful. I’m with Cruz that Republicans should use every tool in the shed to stall or stop Obamacare. But we should expose the terror of the policy and attack the strategy fiercely, and I do. But describing the fearful as liberals is neither accurate or compelling them to switch.

After watching this for a few years, though it isn’t scientifically tested, age seems a more reliable indicator than any other to the disposition of conservatives toward fighting for the truth. Conservatives whose political experience formed after the mid-1990s are more inclined to engage a conflict for what they believe than those whose political perspective was formed before that time. Why do you think that is? It is around that time that talk-radio was developing into now a very common communication medium, pay-television news was becoming more universal, and the Internet was taking popular route. My technical partner in a computer business was using the Internet in 1994 still in text mode. In other words, it was a less-than 1% info trove for computer geeks. After I went home with disability in ’95, I got on operating and participating in political email lists when no graphics or sound were yet being passed. I was part of still a small percentage of Americans.

The bottom-line is that communications to the masses was still greatly dominated by the New York-Los-Angele culture of ignorance that favored Democrats to “help” the people against rich and greedy or backward redneck Republicans. Republicans were used to being swatted in media like a bad dog. They had learned to operate in a flinch: be glad you’re there and have a dish at all. Don’t make them angry. After all, Goldwater did that and was spanked in 1964. Never mind that Reagan stood up to it and won two landslides in ’80 and ’84. “He was special. We ordinary human can’t do that.” If you learned political operation before that time, that disposition was Politics 101. It seemed like when you entered the game, you were sent to classes.

I submit as a paradigm, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Coburn is a true conservative. He’s also a medical doctor. He knows Obamacare is very bad news. He spoke against the idea everywhere when it was forming. But he opposes the tactic of Cruz and those who follow him. Why? Because if we make a fight of it and Reid/Obama shut down government services, WE will be blamed and politically injured. “Hey, I wish it were different, but it’s right in the book. You can’t fight science.” (That’s a little slap at a pop-culture pet peeve.) Coburn is a politician 65 years old. He didn’t make the chronological cutoff. He is pitching his Republican standard paranoia on forums like MSNBC and The Huffington Post.

It’s no accident that the valiant conservative crusaders are young guys like Cruz, Lee, Rubio and Paul. They aren’t moved by fear of criticism. They are moved by the American ideal and what they believe to be the truth. As Chuck Schumer says of Cruz: “He believes he’s right and everyone else is wrong.” Never mind that if you believe something, of course you think those who disagree are wrong. So does Schumer. And he’s as determined as Cruz, in the other direction.

I should mention that the other Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who turns 70 in November, is with the young guns. But Inhofe’s always been thought an intransigent right-winger. He’s very clear-eyed and must be a terrific grandpa. But he’s no national beacon of charisma. And Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions at 66, watched Cruz awhile and saw that his effort was right. But he’s another reliable conservative. But hey, Oklahoma and Alabama are both among the few most conservative states in the country. In another 10-20 years, all of these old-media dogmatists should be flushed out of the system. But unfortunately I don’t think the sputtering American system can last that long.

In a few months, after enrollment, benefits and subsidies are underway, undoing that will be more difficult than pulling teeth…without anesthesia. And if Republicans take control of Congress, which I think is less likely when they have played with their heads down and ceded the funding of Obamacare, I strongly expect that they will advocate qualifications to Obamacare which reflect the utter abandonment of any pretense of constitutionality. No individual or state authority over the definition, purchase and/or delivery of medical care. I wish Thomas Jefferson or James Madison were here to hear this nonsense. Those are fighting words. And I won’t abandon The Constitution to a mere museum artifact.