CJLF is not a political organization. The blog entries here support Republican policies more often than Democratic ones, but that is not uniformly the case. CJLF (and I, as a guest contributor) support policies designed to suppress crime and create fewer crime victims. If those policies originate with Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch (an opponent of pot legalization), so be it; in some ways, so much the better.
It is thus with no political bent that I report the unbounded stupidity of an idea floated by Republican Congressman Charlie Dent: To elect the next House Speaker as a "bi-partisan compromise."
The Republican Party is having a war with itself. (So are the Democrats, to a lesser extent, as the crony progressivism of Hillary Clinton battles it out with the acknowledged socialism of Bernie Sanders). But, for either party, while the way to resolve internal differences might be elusive, the way not to resolve them is crystal clear: By handing power to the other party.
A little less than a year ago, voters gave the Republicans more House seats than they have had since the 1930's. They did this after a Republican campaign against the policies of President Obama. The notion that what voters actually wanted was to re-empower the party they just rejected by an historic margin is way beyond Twilight Zone territory. Or, as one Congressman put it, "When Republicans have the biggest majority in 90 years, they'e going to give more power to the Democrats?" asked Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) sarcastically. "That sounds like a great idea."
There is a second, crystal clear way not to resolve them. That is for a small group on one fringe of the party to say, "You will build the house to our specifications or we will burn it down."
Bingo!
This is why, for example, the minority, red meat libertarian faction in the Republican Party -- the faction that has been most vocal (although not entirely alone) in supporting a kind of sentencing "reform" indistinguishable from Al Sharpton's version -- should, ummmm, take a deep breath.
Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese knew what they were doing, and their program succeeded wildly. Time to respect it.