Let’s keep our convention attacks in perspective, shall we?
CLEVELAND — Let’s not overstate the present crisis, shall we?
We are not turning into a socialist country because we have welfare programs. You’d think Florida Rep. Ted Yoho would know that, having admitted to members of the Nevada delegation to the Republican National Convention at a luncheon Tuesday that he was briefly on food stamps after getting laid off during the Jimmy Carter administration. (It’s always a Democrat’s fault, isn’t it?)
But Yoho got back on his feet, went back to school, got a degree and built a veterinary practice, proof that welfare-to-work is possible and even beneficial. He should be the poster child for it, instead of voting for bills that cut the program!
We are not anything like America circa 1776, because of “unbridled” growth of government and assaults on the rights of Americans, as Dr. Ben Carson told the Nevada delegation at its lunch. (For one thing, the lack of rights at that time drove Americans to the Revolutionary War.) If secular progressives get even one nominee on the Supreme Court, Carson warned, “it’s unlikely that we will ever be able to recover from that.”
Why don’t we start by simply holding votes on the nominations the president has already made, such as U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland, a man praised by both Republicans and Democrats as a fair-minded and well-qualified jurist. To simply ignore that nomination and refuse to hold a vote is an utter failure to live up to the oath of office for senators, yet the Republican-controlled Senate has done just that.
In fact, there was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the stage Tuesday evening, boasting of his promise to not allow the president of the United States to exercise his powers to fill up vacancies on the Supreme Court, because McConnell said he had promised that honor to the next president. And the delegates cheered! This was possibly the lowest point of the convention thus far.
Hillary Clinton is not a follower of Lucifer, as Carson implied when it was his turn to speak at the big podium. It’s true that Clinton may have studied “Rules for Radicals,” a book by community organizer Saul Alinsky, which was dedicated to Lucifer, “the original radical.” But that’s a long walk around the block to imply that Clinton is the enemy of all good Christian values. (“I’m not politically correct,” Carson warned the crowd at the start of his remarks. Or even correct, for that matter.)
We’re not in danger of losing “the American dream” as businessman and Trump friend Andy Wist warned. “The only way we keep the American dream alive is if we elect Donald Trump,” Wist said. This is among the weakest arguments for anybody, since the definition of the American dream isn’t universally shared. A society of low personal and corporate income taxes where individuals are free to succeed (and government policy is designed to help those with capital)? Dreamy! But even more people would embrace an American dream where working-class wages were higher, where health care was more available and affordable, and the wealthy perpetrators of fraud were punished at least as badly as liquor store thieves.
In fact, the truest thing uttered from the stage on Tuesday might have been California Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s pithy one-liner: “Hillary Clinton is the definition of status quo.”
Indeed. But doesn’t that cut against the image of Clinton as a devil-appreciating, America-hating, self-serving radical who will do anything for power, instead of a someone who, say, will govern cautiously as a moderate-to-liberal, modern Democrat? We should probably take care not to understate the present crisis, either.
Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. Follow him on Twitter @SteveSebelius or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.
