Stop the Government Takeover of Congress!

Editorial by Irwin Kram

Senior Fellow at the Factual American Research Trust (FART)

Today, House Republicans announced a "Pledge to America," promising to protect us from "an out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites." While technically speaking, these elites were appointed by a majority of the US electorate, they pose a dire threat to our Constitutional liberties. Free elections only work if when the wrong people get elected, they aren't allowed to govern. But Democrats refuse to admit that the voters were wrong, and have insisted on trying to govern anyway.

The Left has become so radical, it believes it's the government's job to make, interpret, and enforce the law. Well we the people have had enough, which is why more than 67,000 of us have joined the teabagging movement. That's nearly 0.02% of the US population, and roughly 97% of political news coverage!

But despite the appeal of ex-witch, anti-masturbation activists, voters don't need to abandon traditional Republicans to protect their freedoms. Senate Republicans have not gotten enough credit for their heroic use of the filibuster. In the three years since Democrats took control of the Senate, Republicans have mounted more filibusters than in all the years of the previous decade combined. They have protected the federal courts from being taken over by federally appointed judges, blocking a record 57% of Pres. Obama's judicial nominees, and have successfully stopped over 420 bills!

With the filibuster now a default position, Republicans need only 41 votes to defeat the 59 Democrats. This week's attempted repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell lost with 56 votes for and only 43 against. That's not just a revolution in politics, it's a revolution in math! But of course the liberal media doesn't celebrate this as historically unprecedented. They just treat it as politics as usual.

In the past three months alone, Republican senators have filibustered tax cuts, jobs bills, unemployment, even FAA safety regulations (because if the founding fathers had wanted government to regulate air travel, they would have specifically said so). Congressional Republicans understand that the Constitution limits the role of government to regulating who can marry whom and where people can worship, and they're determined to make sure it does nothing else. Anything beyond that would be un-American.