Will the GOP Exercise Power?

I don’t have any idea how this is going to go. Absent a miracle, the GOP is set for a pretty big victory next year – and if the chips fall the right way, perhaps an historic victory. The GOP could sweep into DC in 2023 with 260+ House members and 53+ Senators. And then, what? What does the GOP do?

We know that Team Pudding doesn’t give a damn what the law says and we also know that the bureaucracy is controlled by the DNC and so will carry out any Democrat executive order. The Congress is really reduced to its primordial function here: the Executive can’t tax or spend without Congressional approval. But, will the GOP go to the mat? I’m not talking about a shutdown leading to another continuing resolution…I’m talking about, say, zeroing out all DOJ funds for domestic surveillance of American citizens? Where it would illegal for the FBI to spend even a red cent checking up on us. They still might, of course. They are, after all, the DNC’s Stasi…but any such action would be manifestly illegal and any future GOP Executive could have the agents who engaged in it prosecuted.

But that is the kind of battles we’d have to engage it. Genuine Charles I vs Parliament stuff. It must be kept in mind that the real power in the United States is in Congress. President’s can order all sorts of thing, judges can rule any way they like but if the money isn’t there, it doesn’t really happen. We’ve got this mental attitude that the President, being elected by the whole country, represents the United States. That isn’t the case: Congress does. People and States are represented in Congress, not the Executive or Judiciary. The President is the instrument whereby Congressional action is carried out. Since we first got our Imperial Presidency under TR, people have lost sight of that. But it is the reality. The law is actually there and nowhere else.

Do they have the courage? Do they even have the knowledge of what they can do? Congress set up a joint committee during the Civil War to monitor the Executive. And Lincoln had to pay heed to it…because if he didn’t, he’d have trouble getting money out of Congress. When was the last time an American Executive actually went, hat in hand, to a Congressional committee? The Executive is supposed to…but for the past decades, it has all been a charade where what gets into a law is worked out in secret and then handed to a stupefied Congress a couple hours before the vote is scheduled. My bet is that most Congresspersons don’t even know the legislative rules (though a few, like MTG, are learning them).

But the GOP will be granted massive power next year – and if they refuse to use it, then it will all be retained by the Executive, run by a senile man’s people. We’re spinning towards national catastrophe and it may be up to the Congressional Republicans to save us.

And, yes: God help us!