King lamented that may GOP members of Congress come
from very conservative districts where they “live in an echo chamber”.
He argued that those Republicans are so blinded by being anti-Obama,
that they would rather put American lives at risk, than yield an inch to
the President on immigration reform. While King announced that he, like
his GOP colleagues, was not in favor of President Obama’s Executive
Order on immigration, he noted that funding Homeland Security was more
important than picking a fight with Obama over immigration policy.
King was adamant that funding Homeland Security was a matter of life and death,
and that Republican actions endangered the country, by threatening to
“take away our front lines against Islamic terrorism”. The New York
Congressman chastised his fellow Republican lawmakers repeatedly, for
putting American lives at risk.
In addition to arguing that the Tea Party wing of
the GOP was foolishly playing with American lives, the Congressman also
argued that their strategy made no sense politically, either. He likened
Republican strategy, to the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean
War, and to Custer’s Last Stand. By comparing the Tea Party strategy to
two exceedingly foolhardy military attacks, King was accusing his GOP
colleagues of not only being morally wrong, but also of being flat out
stupid.
In fairness to the Tea Party wing, Congressmen Peter
King is prone to hawkishness on foreign policy, and his fear of Islamic
terrorism at home, is often out of proportion to the actual
threat. Nevertheless, King is on target with his criticism of his House
GOP colleagues. Many of them dwell so much on anti-immigration
sentiment, and anti-Obama fervor, that they have lost any sense of
perspective for how to govern.
Fed by votes from xenophobic Obama-bashing zealots
in deep red congressional districts, these Tea Party representatives
have little incentive to govern. They simply can count on stoking the
flames of right-wing rage, to propel their political careers, while they
let the nation suffer from their collective inaction.
The Tea Party wing of the GOP puts Congressman Peter
King in a quandary, because the Long Island swing district he
represents, twice voted for Barack Obama for President, albeit narrowly.
King has an incentive to govern, because he is in a district that could
theoretically turn on him, and replace him with a Democrat in 2016.
This is a concern that many of his fellow Republicans in Congress do not
share.
Tea Party members who represent places like East
Texas, the Ozarks, and the Kansas plains, are not only far removed from
the sites of the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks, they are also far
removed from any threat of being bounced out of office by a Democrat.
Many of them are looking over their right shoulders at the threat of
being ousted by a more extreme conservative in a GOP primary, but they
don’t even have to glance to their left, ensconced as they are in
completely safe red districts.
However, the bottom line should be, that
on issues of national security, the primary concern on how to vote
should not be dictated by political considerations. Instead, lawmakers
should focus on what will best provide security for the American people.
While we don’t have to agree with Peter King’s assessment of the
terrorist threat, nor do we have to accept the notion that Homeland
Security is the “be all and end all” for combating terrorism. However,
King’s criticism of his fellow GOP lawmakers is a legitimate one. If
they care about the security of our nation, they should stop playing
politics with Homeland Security funding, and the self-righteous
delusional wing of the Republican Party should step aside and let the
Congress vote on a clean funding bill. Anything less, as Congressmen
King said, is “madness” that must come to an end.
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