The Congress That Needs To Go Home

The Congress That Needs To Go Home
By Hugh Hewitt
12/3/2010

This failed Congress needs to close up shop and go home. They have become the unwelcome house guest, staying and staying and indifferent to every hint the host can give to clear out. They are the neighbor across the hall who thinks nothing of knocking with an inane request in the middle of the night. They are the guy in the next room at the hotel who left his television on but fell asleep so you can listen to Sports Center all night through while he sleeps.

This Congress needs to go away. That which it did, it shouldn’t have done. That which is didn’t do, it can no longer do well.

Clear out. Vamoose. Scram.

Go play in the street.

It is hard to remember any Congress for any reason, good or bad. It is an institution of immense power, but the consequences of that power have very short shelf spans when it comes to American memory. Try naming five House members from prior to 2000. Got that, did you? OK, try from prior to 1990. If you want to go farther, link a legislative accomplishment to each of the five.

Hard work that, and it isn’t going to change in the next three weeks. Once and a while a Congress will rouse itself to pass a crucial bit of lawmaking like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Reagan tax cuts, or to authorize FDR or George W. Bush to take the country into war. But that is not this Congress. This is simply the Congress that nearly bankrupted the United States and which set its health care system on the path to ruin. If its successor Congress does not remedy the ills done by this gang, this gang will go down in our books as the worst Congress since the Reconstruction Radicals ran the game.

We know this. Most of the Members of Congress know this, except wild-eyed Nancy Pelosi, still looking for the strawberries. But their swarming 10% --that mass of MoveOn.org activists, MSNBC watchers and lefty blog writers that churns and churns and churns and on whom the American people threw a pail of water on November 2—isn’t melting away quietly. They are melting, but not completely, and very much not quietly.

Their howls are scaring the Democratic remnant, many of whom are out of a job or facing political exile in 23 months. But these shocked involuntary retirees aren’t allowed to enjoy the last month in office and the next wave of Democrats scheduled to go over the top aren't allowed to mount an attempt to work a sane set of repairs to their political positions. Their fringe is in the saddle, forcing them to push for tax hikes, to defend NPR, and to demand the Dream Act and the repeal of DADT, none of which will happen as Jon Kyl so bluntly spelled out on my radio show yesterday (the transcript is here) but all of which is being carefully noted by an electorate in no mood to be ignored, which is exactly what the Democrats are doing.

Instead we get more theater of the left for the left, and the public is taking notes. Senators John Tester, Claire McCaskill, Kent Conrad, Jim Webb, Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Sherrod Brown and who knows how many House Democrats are watching their colleagues pack up and get ready for the life of a loser looking for work and wondering whether Harry Reid having just survived his race in a very small state with a very large pot of money is the best guy to understand what is going on in the country.

Perhaps history will be the Democrats' guide. Here is the close of Oliver Cromwell’s speech dissolving the Long Parliament in 1653:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!

Amen. Email it to a D.C. Democrat.
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To read another article by Hugh Hewitt, click here.