Purge RINOs, Replace with Liberty Leadership

Dear Colleague in Liberty,

 
Earlier this month, a steadfast minority within the House Republican Caucus  slapped their wanton Leader right across the face for his sordid attempt to seduce them into getting just a little bit pregnant by raising taxes on millionaires. Bravo for them! The “B” in Plan B now stands for blunder after the upright Republican minority rejected John Boehner’s pass at their virtue and forced him to withdraw “Plan B” for a lack of a majority.  Taxus interruptus, you might call it.
 
In today’s redistribution-addled America, raising taxes on millionaires doesn’t really count as a tax hike anymore.  Never mind that the House Republicans just won their majority by running opposed to any tax increase, by any name, on anyone whosoever.  Even Washington’s anti-tax high cardinal Grover Norquist had extended his indulgence to Boehner, offering the Speaker and his followers remission from punishment for his Plan-B seduction of the innocents.

Stand with Liberty minded Republicans in Congress
Stand up to the Establishment and their Tax Hikes
Sign the Letter to Support the 'Purged' Libertarian Republicans
and Call for a New GOP Leadership Election

 
But then Speaker Boehner got caught out with his pants down in the full glare of the U.S. House of Representatives trying to wheedle libertarian conservatives into yielding to his advances and then holding hands with him while telling their constituents, in their best Bill Clinton impersonation, “We did not raise taxes with that vote.”  No, Mr. Boehner, like pornography, libertarian conservatives outside the Washington Beltway still know a tax hike when they see it, even if Mr. Norquist doesn’t.
 
The Speaker’s ploy had been first to compromise the tax resisters’ character with this one, itsy-bitsy, harmless tax hike on millionaires so he could then mousetrap them into voting for higher taxes on more people when Obama and Senate Democrats demanded it. An unseemly effort to say the least because once Boehner’s quarry had cast that first vote to raise tax rates on millionaires, their delicate situation would have become obvious to everyone despite any protestations to the contrary that they really did not raise taxes with that vote.  But at that point, having sullied their innocence and left them in a taxing way, Bad Boy Boehner would have been positioned to coo sweet nothings in their ear, telling them they might as well enjoy it, go all the way and cast that second vote to raise taxes more—the voters surely would respect them in the morning.
 
John Boehner’s tawdry seduction failed but the battle over taxes is not yet won, far from it.
 
By now I’m sure you are aware of the House Leadership’s earlier efforts to impose lock-step party discipline on liberty-minded House Republicans by purging principled libertarians and conservatives in the GOP Caucus from their committee assignments.  It was all part of the same plan to intimidate House Republicans into letting the Leadership have its way with them.  One could almost hear the whip cracking all across Capitol Hill.

Stand with Liberty minded Republicans in Congress
Stand up to the Establishment and their Tax Hikes
Sign the Letter to Support the 'Purged' Libertarian Republicans
and Call for a New GOP Leadership Election

 
With the purges, Speaker Boehner was making it clear that dissent within the Republican ranks would not be tolerated, while Romney VP running mate Paul Ryan was backing him up.  Two of the four purged Republicans lost their positions on the Budget Committee, which Ryan chairs, for voting for a five-year balanced budget plan instead of Paul Ryan's budget proposal that would have taken 28 years to bring the budget into balance.
 
As Boehner is reported to have told a closed-door GOP Caucus meeting, the Republican Leadership is “watching Members’ voting patterns.”  Last night, in the People’s House, more liberty-minded conservatives joined the four principled purged Republicans and told Boehner, “Watch this, Mr. Leader!”
 
The committee purge was the first time a Republican had been ousted from his committee seat, other than for a breach of legal or ethical standards, since House Speaker Dennis Hastert removed a member after numerous personal run-ins with him.  Even “The Hammer” Tom Delay did not behave so heavy-handed during his tenure as Speaker.
 
It was not enough that the same Republican Establishment had spurned and humiliated libertarian conservatives at the GOP convention in Tampa last August.  Afterwards, they brought their urge to purge back to Washington, punishing Republican Members of the House who dared defy the establishment party line—a party line that now extends to—
 
·      Raising tax rates;

·      Cutting Social Security for current retirees but rejecting true reforms for young workers;

·      Hacking away at Medicare on top of ObamaCare’s trillion-dollar Medicare cuts without providing true reform to the seniors’ health program;

·      Protecting outlandish military spending that does nothing to defend America but rather is all about feathering the nest of the military-industrial complex and sustaining perpetual war as a Keynesian jobs program; and

·      Surrendering to President Obama the unilateral power to raise the debt ceiling on his own without having to seek specific congressional authorization.

Stand with Liberty minded Republicans in Congress
Stand up to the Establishment and their Tax Hikes
Sign the Letter to Support the 'Purged' Libertarian Republicans
and Call for a New GOP Leadership Election

 
Little wonder the Republican Leadership felt the need to exert an iron grip on the House Republican Caucus.  Otherwise, no libertarian conservative worthy of the label would ever vote “yea” on such an abomination.  Thank God, a few brave House Republicans spoke truth to power on Plan B and just said no.
 
But the battle of the House has just begun.  Having been routed on Plan B despite its intimidation with the committee purge, it must be expected that Boehner and company are now prepared to decimate the GOP ranks to enforce whatever discipline is necessary to shove its surrender of principle down the GOP Caucus’s throat.
 
To his credit, Senator Rand Paul has launched a campaign to halt the purges.  Sen. Paul is gathering signatures of liberty-minded people on a petition to John Boehner and Paul Ryan urging them to stop purging libertarian conservatives from committee assignments and to reinstate the four Republicans already purged from their positions.
 
Sen. Paul’s Stop-the-Purge Petition is a start but it does not go nearly far enough.  No amount of urging, cajoling or coaxing the Republican Leadership will suffice.  The stakes are too high for the Old Bulls to yield, especially after being spurned on Plan B.  They can be expected, therefore, to trample their own if they think doing so will save their own hides.  Only if the Republican Establishment fears reprisals from its own ranks as the larger threat will they back away from their betrayal.
 
Now is time for new blood in the GOP Leadership.  It is time for Liberty Leadership in the Congress.  Unless there are truly liberty-minded Members within leadership ranks, there is no hope of halting the stampede of the Old Bulls in the Republican Establishment away from libertarian-conservative principles. 
 
Unfortunately, the old House Republican Leadership already was rubber stamped last month in quiet organizational meetings.  Meet the new GOP Leadership, the same as the old leadership.  Unless last night’s tactical victory is followed up on with a strategic advance on the GOP citadel, Speaker Boehner’s “Plan B” will be just the beginning.  The whispers of sweet nothings will soon turn into threats and ultimatums.

Stand with Liberty minded Republicans in Congress
Stand up to the Establishment and their Tax Hikes
Sign the Letter to Support the 'Purged' Libertarian Republicans
and Call for a New GOP Leadership Election

 
Fortunately, there will be another opportunity for Republican backbenchers to express their outrage over the Leadership’s heavy-handed purges and iron-fisted coercion to force Republicans to abandon their principles.  They can vote “present” or vote for another Republican on January 3 when Speaker Boehner’s candidacy for Speaker of the House comes to the House Floor on the first day of the 113th Congress next year.
 
It is time to thin the herd of Old Bulls.  Therefore, Republican backbenchers should go one revolutionary step beyond just voting against Speaker Boehner; they should demand new leadership elections in the aftermath of the committee purges and Boehner’s bum’s rush on “Plan B.”
 
If we are to stop the transformation of the Republican Party into a doppelgänger of the Democratic Party, it is necessary to replace the Old Bulls with new leaders who have the fiber and courage to put principle above party, to place the interests of the American people above their own perks and power.
 
So by all means, sign Senator Paul’s petition to Boehner and Ryan to stop the purges, but also please take the revolutionary next step and sign this letter to the four purged House Republicans urging them to vote against Speaker Boehner if they are not reinstated to their committee seats and he doesn’t lay off trying to intimidate them into raising taxes.  Enjoin them to go further than just voting “no” on the election of John Boehner to the Speaker’s chair; urge them also to take the revolutionary step of calling for new Republican House Leadership elections before the 113th Congress convenes.
 
If they launch the revolution in the House of Representatives, Revolution PAC will support them and stand with them to stop the stampede of the Old Bulls away from principle, even if that means backing challenges to the Old Bulls in their next congressional re-election bid.
 
If the Republican Party surrenders its principles and conspires with the Democrats to produce a craven compromise on the Fiscal Cliff and debt ceiling in the aftermath of the Plan-B fiasco, they finally will have become indistinguishable from the Democratic Party and, therefore, deserving of defeat in the next election.

Stand with Liberty minded Republicans in Congress
Stand up to the Establishment and their Tax Hikes
Sign the Letter to Support the 'Purged' Libertarian Republicans
and Call for a New GOP Leadership Election

When in the course of political events, the political party out of power so covets power that it abandons its principles and becomes the doppelgänger of the party in power, it becomes the highest and noblest purpose of liberty-minded people to defeat the impostor party they once called their own.  For only then will it be possible for a new, principled party or a principled reincarnation of the impostor party to rise from the ashes in due course.
 
This is where the revolution begins; not on the streets but in the House, the People’s House.
 
Defend Liberty and help us elect Liberty Leaders in the Congress,

Larry Hunter
209 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE
Suite 2109
Washington, DC 20003