Ann Coulter’s latest column delves into the history of the current showdown between the Republicans and Democrats on the partial government shutdown. In a nutshell, Republicans have put forward bills funding all aspects of the federal government and the Democrats in the Senate won’t even vote on them. So we have this shutdown, and President Obama is having federal workers do everything possible to make it painful for the American people. Then comes the real point of the column – the Democrats really do believe that they own the federal government.
A longtime Democratic operative, Karen Finney, explained the Democrats’ intransigence on MSNBC to a delighted Joan Walsh (aka the most easily fooled person on TV) by comparing House Republicans to a teenager trying to borrow his mother’s car. “No, I’m not negotiating!” Mother says. “It’s MY CAR!”
This wasn’t a stupid slip of the tongue that other Democrats quickly rejected. Finney had used the exact same metaphor to a panel of highly agreeable MSNBC guests the day before. (MSNBC books no other kind of guest.)
The left thinks the government is their car and the people’s representatives are obstreperous teenagers trying to borrow the government. Which belongs to Democrats.
She adds a very succinct argument we should all use when talking to people buying what the Democrats are selling.
That’s not how the Constitution views the House of Representatives. To the contrary, the House is considered most reflective of the people’s will because its members are elected every two years.
As a matter of fact, the Republicans who mistakenly assume they have something to do with running the government represent most of the people who pay taxes to run it. So it’s more like a teenager who is making the car payments, maintaining the car insurance and taking responsibility for registering the car being told: “It’s not your car.”
Read the whole thing, there’s much more.
What gets me is that it’s a neutral, objective fact that the House Republicans have passed a dozen or more bills that fund the government. It’s a neutral, objective fact that the Democrats refuse to vote on almost of all of those bills in the Senate. But the media is leaving much of that out, and instead airing the nasty rhetoric the Democrats can’t stop themselves from spewing. They keep repeating the Democrats’ demand for a “clean” funding bill, as if funding government piece-by-piece is dirty. I’ll bet most Americans would have no problem if they started routinely funding the government on a piece-by-piece basis. Then the people might have a better idea of where there tax dollars are going. But silly me, the Democrats own the government, so why should they do anything we the people might want.