Many years ago, in my first year of fencing, my coach told me that learning fencing would take time, to which I retorted, “I’m part of the instant gratification generation!”
He thought that was funny.
Evidently, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy thinks the entire country embodies the Instant Gratification Generation central tenet:
“Look, we will never give up our oversight role, but this country is too great for a small vision of just investigations,” McCarthy said at a press conference. “There are challenges out there that we have to get done. And to be fair, we have been investigating for the last two years.
“I think it should come to a close. I think the country wants to be able to solve the problems going forward,” McCarthy said. “They want to see the challenges that we have, but actually rise to the occasion of — that the generations of Americans have done before us.” [The Hill]
Of course, this comes from a leader of the party which still wants to investigate former Secretary of State Clinton over the Benghazi matter – never mind that the first seven investigations found nothing. Can anyone say hypocrisy?
So this leads to the question of the century – how do we encourage our elected representatives to stop putting Party over Country? This is what McCarthy is doing, and I think about half our country is tired of it.
I’d like to suggest that we turn it into a quasi-ritual, and that ritual is this: when someone achieves electoral victory to some seat, they should discard their ties of loyalty to their party. This, of course, is beyond government to enforce, so it must be enforced by the voters. I think the best way is to simply ask them during the campaign: Will you disregard your ties to your party when it comes to matters of your country?
I’m sure there will be a lot of sputtering, but given how frantic the Republicans have been to safeguard President Trump from investigation, from Nunes to McCarthy to, well, there’s been a whole bunch of Republicans who think their personal loyalty to Trump is what makes them statesmen, ANYWAYS this does not seem like an outrageous question to ask a candidate. If the answer is not an outright Yes, then tell them they’ll not be getting your vote. And if they don’t act in conformance with their answer during their term in office, that becomes a point to be brought up during the next campaign. It’ll point up the hypocrisy that many members – and, throughout history, I’m sure of all parties – have been practicing of late.
Devin Nunes’ second career as famous toady Grima Wormtongue.
Think of it as a graduation ceremony: moving from one phase of being a citizen to another requires many changes – that’s the point of the ceremony and rituals. In this case, we’re talking about the transferal of matters of allegiance from the Party to the country. It’ll bring home the importance of being a mature member of Congress – and not a Presidential toady.
