Inconvenient ‘shutdown’ truths Republicans don’t want you to know
Besides the “we beat the Democrats” rhetoric we’ve come to expect from Trump and the Republican Party, the recent budget deal ending the so-called shutdown contains a few inconvenient truths they don’t want you to know about.
The first inconvenient truth is obvious: there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and their Democrat counterparts. Evidence of this comes from none other than Democrats themselves who admit that they caved on the shutdown for politically selfish reasons (via The Intercept):
Outraged voters and politicians alike are demanding to know why a group of Senate Democrats sided with Republicans to reopen the government without securing any concessions on preserving health care coverage — just days after the party swept last week’s elections with a burst of energy fueled, in part, by its willingness to fight back.
Democrats had spent weeks arguing that the longest shutdown in history was necessary to make sure health care subsidies administered under the Affordable Care Act were preserved in the next spending package. They won’t be: Instead, Senate Republicans agreed to hold a separate vote on ACA subsidies by the end of the year. With Republicans in the majority, Democrats are almost guaranteed to lose.
Speaking to The Intercept, a key Democratic leader who voted to end the shutdown argued the party did get something out of the fight: the illustration of a point.
“It proved the point that Republicans are not sensitive to health care insurance premiums and we are sensitive to health care insurance premiums,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., “and the national polls show that we’ve made a national issue out of [it].”
Durbin, who is retiring at the end of his current term, is the only member of Democratic leadership to vote for the deal to end the government shutdown. He told The Intercept that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was “disappointed” by his decision but understood. (Emphasis mine)
Translation? Democrats caved, not because they were protecting their constituency, but because they feel it will become a “gotcha” moment that will make Republicans look bad in much the same way that Republicans ignore the interests of their constituents to make Democrats look bad on issues like abortion and the economy. The other item of note is the cave by Dick Durbin; he’s retiring, so he’s no longer concerned about protecting his job and will give Republicans what they want because he knows it doesn’t matter anymore.
In both cases, the reason for the cave by these eight Democrats comes down this: Durbin isn’t running for reelection, and the rest of his fellow Democrat sellouts are more interested in protecting their jobs in the next election than they are in holding to any principles. In the end, they are exactly like Republicans when it comes to protecting their political power, the only difference being the “D” and the “R” following their names.
Another inconvenient shutdown truth is that Trump and the Republican Party included a provision in the “clean spending bill” that gives them ammunition to go after their political enemies while pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process (via The New Republic):
Eight Senate Democrats didn’t just give up on affordable health care by agreeing to a shutdown deal—they also gave the GOP a clear path to take revenge on former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
Bloomberg Law has reported that the very end of the Senate-approved shutdown deal contains a hidden provision that essentially allows Republican senators to sue Smith for millions of dollars in damages after their phone records were seized during his investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The legislation allows any senator who has been searched without their knowledge to be awarded at least $500,000, so long as they weren’t the target of the investigation.
While the provision does not mention Smith by name, it is retroactive to January 1, 2022. That date was just a few months before Smith and the FBI began to request electronic communications from eight GOP senators as part of the January 6 investigation.
“Any Senator whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed in violation of this section may bring a civil action against the United States if the violation was committed by an officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any Federal department or agency,” the provision reads. That would certainly include Smith.
The former special counsel has been seen as an enemy of the administration ever since his dual criminal investigations into Trump for illegal possession of classified documents and his role in January 6. Trump pleaded not guilty on all charges before they were dropped altogether after the 2024 election due to convenient Justice Department policy that prevents the prosecution of a sitting president. (Emphasis mine)
Translation? Trump and the Republican Party are empowering themselves to go after their political enemies and to get paid handsomely for doing so.
Isn’t it great, by the way, that self-interested Republicans care more about protecting their phone records than they do about protecting yours and mine?
These inconvenient shutdown truths serve as the latest reminder that we will never see liberty restored in American until we reject the two-party system, built and operated by the two parties for the benefit of the two parties, and return to the Constitution.
I’ve written plenty over the years about how Trump and the Republican Party often claim to be defenders of the Constitution even as they join hands with Democrats to systematically dismantle it. Not surprisingly, I hear from Trumpists and Republican loyalists who stridently disagree with me while putting politics and personalities over liberty.
They ignore how Trump’s ignorance of the Constitution was evident even during his 2016 campaign. When he was asked by one of the people in attendance at a so-called “unity meeting” with Republicans about the steps he would take to protect Article I of the Constitution which outlines the powers of the legislative branch — a question motivated by Obama’s abuse of executive power — Trump responded with a promise to “protect Article I, Article II, and even Article XII.” That sounds great until you realize that there are only seven articles.
As we look back at the years that passed since that time, Trump’s ignorance and/or complete disregard of the Constitution has been on full display, confirming what we’ve always known about the New York liberal . . . he is and always will be a threat to liberty and the Constitution. And under Trump 2.0, his tyrannical and authoritarian presidency has grown worse as he turns America into a Constitution-free zone.
Trump and his bought-and-paid-for Republican Party have replaced conservatism with Nationalism — which is warmed-over Democratic Socialism with an “R” attached to it — to advance a plethora of pro-socialist/anti-Constitution ideals near and dear to the hearts of the duopoly.
Donald Trump, Republicans, and even a few Democrats want you to believe that the recent budget deal ending the so-called shutdown is a victory for America, but the inconvenient truths behind the deal show something they don’t want you to know about.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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