If I were a Republican living in Georgia, I’d vote in the Senate runoff elections despite suggestions from some that it would be better not to vote as a protest against the rigged system.
Were I a Democrat, I probably could vote illegally from my Pennsylvania home in those runoff elections, which speaks to the problem we face in keeping this country a free representative republic.
But there is another political problem in this country, one made clear by Rudy Giuliani on the Friday night Lou Dobbs program on Fox.
To paraphrase Giuliani, Republicans can’t even be counted on to stick together as a party to do the right thing. Meanwhile, Democrats will unite around any cause, right or wrong, that their leaders tell them to support.
Giuliani said he’s heard from some Republicans who have indicated to him they just don’t have the guts to stand up for what they know is right and in so doing risk being attacked by the left-wing lunatics and their lapdog media.
Republicans are weak in their convictions, a status evidenced by the U.S. Senate, where a handful of confused members who list their affiliation as Republican can’t seem to grasp consistently what that should mean in terms of passing legislation.
Maine’s Susan Collins is a poster child for wanting to be courted and convinced to do the right thing in terms of voting for Republican causes. Yet just today she was on hand at an affair designed to feed amnesty to illegal aliens, a pet project of the Democrats.
Collins is a coin-flip on whether or not she will support a Republican proposal, so maybe she should run as an Independent.
We have a nominal Republican Senator in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, who has announced his retirement. Good riddance to a guy who also often forgets his alleged party affiliation.
If you stuck a truth needle in the arm of some of these Republicans of convenience, you might find they actually don’t believe the pap they are spewing, but instead, like the fortitude-challenged types to which Giuliani referred, they don’t have the stomach for being attacked for the crime of being correct on an issue.
Such has become – with apologies to Teddy Roosevelt – the big stick of the political left. They intimidate the weak with riots, threats, boycotts, harassment on social media or in person and all other manner of psychological and economic warfare.
They are petulant children who act out and get away with it because such a large segment of those in charge, and the population in general, has gone full Milquetoast. How far they will be able to push their agenda before the 74 million or so who voted for Donald Trump, and those philosophically aligned with that large group, decide to push back – hard – remains an open question.
What is more clear in the wake of this disputed election, and the unpleasant aftermath, is that the U.S. needs desperately a third major party.
I’m not talking about some splinter joke of a third party that only succeeds in siphoning off votes from one major party or the other and thereby swinging an election.
It should have been clear even before recent months that our two-party system has become something of a joke. Trump had to defeat both the Democrats and establishment Republicans on his way to the Oval Office.
Once Trump was there, he got precious little support from Republicans in Congress. Oh, they welcomed him when he showed up to headline rallies for their re-elections. But they wouldn’t go out of their way to back up his legislative agenda.
There must be millions of traditional Democrats who feel similarly abandoned in their party’s leftward lurch.
A legitimate third party could unite these alienated Republicans and Democrats, give them a presidential candidate who will work for them and not stab them in the back.
They would welcome someone who would refuse to betray their interests by working to roll back work visa limits, won’t welcome Chinese domination of markets and the resulting theft of U.S. jobs through questionable means, and absolutely won’t side with those looking to defund police, do away with any fossil fuels, or turn this into a handout nation.
Such a president would have trouble with Congress, until such time the third party could be broadened to have enough candidates to run, and win, seats in the House and Senate.
But how different would that be than what President Trump faced with Democratic opposition and gutless members of his party failing to step up to support him?
If somehow Georgia’s Republican administration, to paraphrase the popular street lingo, grows a pair, insures fair play, and the Republican candidates can win at least one of those Senate runoff elections, it can provide a delay on the left-wing takeover of this country.
But it would be nothing more than that, a brief respite. What the country needs is to find a way for the people who believe in traditional values and honest elections to express those opinions. A major third party would be a significant step in that direction, if only to remind the Democrats and Republicans they no longer are the only game in town and able to take for granted their bases.
It would beat the increasingly possible and violent alternative as expressed by the slogan on soldier-of-fortune T-shirts “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”
Sam Ross Jr's site 