DHS Funding and Politics

While I generally consider myself a proud Republican – and while I almost always defend both the tactics and policies of the Republicans Party whenever necessary – I very much dislike the idiotic political strategy congressional Republicans have been attempting to use with regard to funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the past few weeks. In short, House Republicans passed a bill that ties together a challenge to President Obama’s “executive amnesty” with money for the DHS, such that if a Democrat wishes to vote in favor of providing the necessary funding for that particular department, he or she must also make an indirect show of opposition toward the President’s immigration policy. The bill ended up passing the House easily, but was held up in the Senate due to Democrats’ obvious uneasiness with regard to its ridiculous stipulations. As an ultimate result, Senate Majority Leader McConnell has been forced to reject or separate the bill lest Republicans come across as if they are opposed to public, domestic safety. In other words, this was a losing proposition for Republicans, no matter how you look at it.

In my view, President Obama’s use of executive fiat to essentially change immigration law constitutes an egregious violation of the separation of powers, and I have made this clear on multiple occasions; however, I cannot support, nor understand, a political move which not only ends up making Republicans look stupid, but which also challenges the President’s policy in an entirely inappropriate manner.

It simply is not fair for either party to tie two disparate pieces of potential legislation – in this case, funding for DHS and a challenge of “executive amnesty” – into one bill, and then cry foul when the other party does not want to vote on it. Obviously, Republicans were trying to force Democrats into making a politically unsavory move, but the end result has been its backfiring on Republicans who look like political craftsmen instead of sincere legislators with honest and well-reasoned issues with overreach from the executive branch. Once more, Congressional Republicans show themselves to be political novices. Their messaging abilities are insufficient to clear the air once they so flippantly fail at passing a piece of legislation through a congress that they, ironically, control.

Thus, I can once again point to the inefficacies of politics, the processes of which are frustrating, arduous, and often perverse. Legislative and government gridlock, according to the original designation of the American system, are not horrific outcomes; rather, they serve to illustrate why bureaucracy must get out of our lives in as complete a manner as possible – because it is so inept in answering the issues we face as citizens that it manages to profoundly complicate, burden, and stifle the marketplaces, programs, and activities that we freely create. Stumbling back to their districts, breathless from all the lies and half-truths they’ve been propagating, slobbering over their own electoral futures, do legislators honestly expect that voters will end up allowing them to continue on with their fatuous regulations and their pernicious revocations of our fundamental rights?

Indeed, they do. They do so because the Left has made it politically expedient to scale back our private liberty and flexibility under the false guise of a deceptive egalitarian ideal. So while I may express utter frustration with the political ineptitude of the Republican Party, you better believe that I will continue to support it in fighting the illiberalism of the modern Left.