After tenaciously focusing on the last stopgap spending measure to humiliate Chuckie Schumer and the Democrats who got nothing out of their shutdown stunt but negative publicity, President Trump took his eye off the ball and wasted the opportunity to bring real discipline to the budget process by ignoring this next looming budget deadline, thus allowing Schumer to conspire with the establishment Republicans to pass a last-minute omnibus spending bill that fully funded the Deep State and humiliate President Trump who had no choice but to sign it to prevent being cast as the man responsible for shutting down the government this time.
The Founding Fathers established a system of checks and balances in the Constitution to prevent the accumulation of power in too few hands which would eventually turn that concentrated power against the American people for their own nefarious means. The Founders were honorable men living in an honorable time when the power of shame was still an effective weapon to chastise the ambitions of those who would place their own interests too far above those of the offices which they held. George Washington himself warned Americans about the sinister effects of political parties and how men could be pressured to place the interests of a political party above their inclination to do the right thing. President Washington is still the only president who did not belong to a political party.
The political party system quickly devolved into the political machine system of patronage exemplified by such corrupt examples as the Tammany Hall machine which dominated New York City politics for over a century and was famously led by Boss Tweed, or the Chicago Machine led by Mayor Richard Daley which controlled all of Chicago and Cook County politics for decades, or the machine of Boss Crump who controlled Memphis, Tennessee. Every major city was controlled by similar political machines aligned with one of the major political parties, most often the Democrat Party. Honorable men inclined to represent the interests of the people above their own interests quickly learned to submit to the will of the machine boss if they ever hoped to secure a political office or patronage job. Such was the power of political machines to corrupt the souls of men as they controlled every aspect of politics for the cities under their control.
The power of these political machines extended well beyond the cities under their control as they controlled access to the political system for unknowns to eventually make a name for themselves. Representatives came from the ranks of these political machines, having worked their way up from ward healer to alderman to mayor all thanks to their political machine ensuring their political victories along the way. Representatives then became senators and eventually presidents. President Harry Truman came up through the ranks of the Pendergast political machine controlling Kansas City and influencing Missouri politics, and even attended the funeral of machine boss Tom Pendergast while president against the advice of those close to him. Truman paid homage to Pendergast despite the negative press while admitting that he would never have become president without the help of Pendergast and the Kansas City machine.
For much of American history, the proclivity of political parties to engage in overt corruption was kept in check by the economics of the newspaper industry. Nothing sold newspapers like banner headlines exposing public corruption of elected officials, and there were plenty of hungry reporters looking to make names for themselves exposing political corruption. These reporters perfected the art of digging through public records to uncover the subtlest of schemes designed to enrich corrupt politicians at the expense of the taxpaying public. This adversarial relationship between the press and the political class reached its zenith with the Watergate investigation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post who unraveled the intricacies of the Watergate break in to reveal the corruption of the Nixon administration and its penchant for engaging in dirty tricks aimed at its political adversaries. Their dogged reporting led to Nixon’s resignation for his part in attempting to cover up the original break with the excuse that it was somehow part of a classified operation. Nixon’s downfall resulted in part because honorable men still existed who could not fully bring themselves to lie for a president.
One of the most unfortunate results of the Watergate scandal was that those with a proclivity to amass political power for their own benefit learned a great deal from watching the Nixon administration dealing with the scandal. These men learned to surround themselves with sycophants willing to sacrifice themselves just to be near to power. They learned to cover their tracks much better by developing the cover story long before it would ever be needed, and to stonewall investigations by refusing to turn over information or cooperate with investigators. Bill Clinton employed these tactics while dealing with the Whitewater investigation of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, and added the additional tactic of mercilessly attacking the investigation while maligning the chief investigator with implications of political motives.
The Obama administration took scandal management to a new level by engaging in multiple scandals on multiple levels simultaneously while employing these tactics on multiple levels to stonewall and harass congressional investigators. Congressional subpoenas for administration records were routinely ignored with the knowledge that Congress lacked the votes or the political will to pose a serious threat to the Obama administration. Establishment Republicans such as House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were more interested in expanding government to satisfy their globalist interests than in seriously confronting the Obama administration over its corruption.
Somewhere along the way, politicians discovered that they could manipulate their constituents back home while voting as they pleased in Washington, DC. As their political corruption expanded, they hatched myriad schemes designed to allow vulnerable congressmen to vote against egregious bills while ensuring the bill would still pass. While Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell conspired with Harry Reid to engineer a series of votes that would allow vulnerable Senate Republicans to rotate their no votes while ensuring the overall stopgap budget legislation would pass. These Republicans could all then go back home and claim they had voted against the legislation while decrying its overall passage and lamenting that they were just one vote among many. Senator Ted Cruz earned the eternal enmity of Senate Republicans for refusing to participate in this corrupt scheme and forcing the Senate to vote straight up on the measure, thus destroying any pretension that these corrupt establishment Republicans were ever against the budget measure.
During its eight years, the Obama administration never put forth a budget and Congress never passed spending legislation covering an entire fiscal year. Congress, during the Obama administration, was marked by an increased laziness which saw it shave its workweek to three days and avoid work on mundane issues such as budgets or any other fiscal responsibility. Feckless establishment Republicans succumbed to the belief widely disseminated by a corrupt media beholden to Democrats that their resistance was futile against such a popular president the media had built into mythological status. Under House Speaker John Boehner, these stopgap budgets were shoved through the House with Boehner pointedly ignoring the screams of conservatives to resist and fight with the feeble excuse that it would be pointless since he lacked the votes to overturn a veto. With Boehner and the establishment Republicans, there were always excuses and never any action, so conservatives turned against them.
Establishment Republicans worked tirelessly attempting to convince fed up voters that Donald Trump would be the ruination of America while shamelessly promoting their stale candidates in 2016. Americans were drawn to Trump’s fiery rhetoric and promises to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again. The more the corrupt media and establishment Republicans attacked Trump, the more Americans flocked to his cause. Democrats spent their efforts minimizing Hillary’s extensive history of corruption while stealing the nomination from socialist Bernie Sanders as the radical progressive wing of the Democrat Party wrestled with the even more radical socialist wing of the party.
President Trump has spent his first year in office fulfilling his campaign promises to the chagrin of disappointed snowflakes who are beside themselves with anger and grief, and to the delight of ecstatic conservatives who are beside themselves with satisfaction. President Trump has managed to roll back much of the radical agenda of the Obama administration while highlighting the media’s corrupt bias towards the radical agenda of the Democrat Party. Dismantling eight years of Obama administration initiatives doesn’t happen overnight, and Trump supporters have patiently followed the steady progress made so far. President Trump has managed to retain his ability to sidestep the corrupt media and attack Democrats in unexpected ways by turning the tables on his detractors and forcing them on the defensive for a change. The Republican establishment has appeared to go along with Trump when it is in their interest, but there is the unmistakable presence of treachery seething below their carefully sculptured surface patiently waiting for the opportunity to betray Trump when he is at his most vulnerable.
During the last budget crisis threatening to shut down the government because Congress has grown too lazy to do its job under the Obama administration which encouraged the practice of Congress lurching from one temporary spending bill to the next with no budget in place, President Trump took to Twitter to inform Americans of the corruption Congress was engaged in to load up an omnibus bill chock full of wasteful spending to fund the government monster. Trump took up the cause of DACA recipients and wrested the issue completely away from Democrats who had claimed it for their own while Chuckie Schumer was reduced to complaining that Trump was outmaneuvering him politically. Schumer’s attempt to pass yet another stopgap budget using the tired old tactic of waiting to the last minute and threatening a government shutdown backfired as Trump boldly exercised his veto power while pinning the blame squarely on Schumer and the Democrats for refusing to deal with the DACA issue. After three humiliating days of a pointless government shutdown, Schumer was forced to eat crow and pass a budget giving Trump everything he wanted.
President Trump then went on the offensive over the DACA issue by presenting a plan to thoroughly vet DACA recipients over a ten year period to admit those who were contributing to America through education and hard work while repatriating those who were here to sponge off the government and engage in criminal activity. Trump hoped to use this opportunity to convert the broken immigration system from the current chain migration model whereby immigrants brought in relatives regardless of their skills, ability to contribute, or desire to assimilate, to one of a merit-based model whereby prospective immigrants bring something to the table to demonstrate their desire to assimilate as hardworking Americans. Democrats, despite their loud cries on behalf of DACA recipients and crocodile tears shed over their plight, demonstrated their true intentions of merely using these DACA recipients as pawns in their political fight with President Trump. To their credit, many of these DACA recipients, along with many others in the immigrant community, have realized that they are being played by the Democrats and have begun demonstrating against the Democrat Party for using their misery as a campaign wedge issue.
After the failure of passing DACA legislation and President Trump’s victory in casting blame squarely on the shoulders of an intransigent Democrat Party preferring to leave the DACA recipients in limbo for political gain rather than address their plight as they promised, President Trump turned his attention to other pressing issues such as North Korea and Russia. With the deadline approaching for resolution of the stopgap budget negotiated during the last stopgap budget crisis, President Trump allowed the initiative on resolving the perpetual budget crisis approach to dissipate all while Schumer was quietly plotting with the establishment Republicans under House Speaker Paul Ryan and McConnell in the Senate to craft an omnibus bill to spring on Trump at the last minute just like they’ve done so effectively in the past. By losing his focus on the budget process and trusting Congress to enact his wishes, President Trump set himself up for failure when the deadline eventually came around.
Schumer and the establishment Republicans skillfully engineered a situation whereby a distracted President Trump would be presented a fait accompli in the form of an omnibus spending bill that dangled increased military spending, a Trump prerogative, against the backdrop of a looming government shutdown. Having wasted his opportunity to keep the public’s attention on the budget process and inform them of congressional treachery, President Trump ended up without the ability to veto the bill as Schumer could now claim Trump was vetoing bipartisan legislation designed to keep the government open while contributing nothing to the process. Schumer could portray himself as dedicated to working the issue as Trump wasn’t publicly pushing Congress to craft a bill reflecting his spending priorities and was susceptible to the charge that he was uninvolved in the process and merely angry at the outcome.
President Trump was neatly rolled by Schumer and the establishment Republicans. Why Trump would ever trust the establishment Republicans who worked against him during the election and have taken every opportunity since to frustrate his agenda is beyond comprehension. Trump was reduced to a short lived hollow veto threat and fuming that this was the last time he would ever sign such a spending bill. Schumer was able to fully fund Planned Parenthood despite Trump’s repeated vow to cut their funding and increase spending on other Democrat initiatives in spite of Trump’s campaign promises. President Trump was left fuming at being rolled so easily, and he ought to be mad as hell, but he has only himself to blame for this debacle.
While busy congratulating themselves, Schumer and the Democrats should be very worried at just what they’ve done. Yes, they managed to spend over a trillion dollars in just half of a year instead of a full year thus increasing the debt and pushing America that much closer to insolvency, but they also managed to royally piss off in Trump a man dedicated to revenge in pursuit of protecting his outsized ego. Trump resolved to run for president during the correspondents’ dinner at which Obama mercilessly humiliated and mocked him for his focus on Obama’s birth certificate, and Trump dedicated his resources to that end with devastating effect. In his vow that he would never again sign such an egregious spending bill, Trump displayed a flash of the same resolve he tapped into to win the presidency and humiliate the narcissistic Obama. Schumer and the treacherous establishment Republicans should be very afraid of a humiliated President Trump as he will now be quietly plotting their demise for his revenge.
President Trump got rolled on this omnibus stopgap spending legislation by taking his focus off the process and trusting that others were watching it for him. He was humiliated in the process, but he won’t make the same mistake twice. Trump is a man who does not like to lose and loathes humiliation. These traits have served him well in life and in politics. Conservatives disheartened by his signing of this monstrosity of a spending bill should remember these things going forward. As we head into the election season, President Trump will have many opportunities to repay the treachery of establishment Republicans who betrayed him by campaigning for their conservative challengers. It may well turn out that these traitors will rue the day they ever conspired with Schumer and the Democrats to betray President Trump in front of Americans made more cognizant by Trump himself of the political process and the treacherous political alliances of the media, the Deep State, the Democrats, and the establishment Republicans.
Independent Conservative 