Tombstone, Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- With the Senate’s passage of the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” on Thursday, and the House’s passage on Friday, the bill is headed to the President’s desk in time for signing before everyone flees Washington to celebrate Independence Day. That seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it.
Others have already written about the numerous problems with the legislation, so I won’t dive deeply into those, but will instead focus on the political ramifications of the whole mess. As a lifelong politics watcher with over 30 years of active participation in the political process, including lobbying, campaigning, working directly for candidates, and as a campaign consultant, I’m at a loss to understand the Republican strategy of working so hard to come up with a “bipartisan, compromise” to give Joe Biden a “win” on gun control.
Sure, it would be tempting for them to want to be able to go home and say “We did something in response to the horror in Uvalde,” but “doing something” that is guaranteed to fail, with components that are patently unconstitutional, and which is guaranteed to alienate a large and very politically active segment of their base, just makes no sense.
You would think that chief Republican negotiator, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, would have gotten a clue when he was booed from the stage at a Republican event in his home state.
Instead, he referred to the frustrated Republicans as a “mob,” and vowed to stay the course in his efforts to “reach a compromise.” It was just after this that Cornyn announced language had been agreed upon. When that language was finally presented to the Senate and the public, senators were given less than an hour to review the details before they were asked to vote to approve the measure to move forward, setting it up for passage the next day.
A group of 15 Republican senators joined with the entire block of Democrats in the Senate to push the bill through. Of those Republicans, four are retiring at the end of this term, so voters can’t hold them directly responsible for their actions. [Toomey (PA), Burr (NC), Portman (OH), Blunt (MO)]
Eight were just reelected in 2020, so they’re not up for reelection until 2026 [Cornyn (TX), Graham (SC), McConnell (KY), Cassidy (LA), Capito (WV), Ernst (IA), Tillis (R-NC), Collins (ME)], and Mitt Romney of Utah, is not up for reelection until 2024. That gives GunVoters ample time to find and promote primary challengers for all of these compromisers.
The final two Republican compromisers are Todd Young of Indiana, who has already won his primary and is expected to win an easy victory in the general, even though his Democratic opponent looks pretty strong, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has a primary in August, and actually has a solid-looking, Republican primary opponent. Alaska uses an unusual “Top 4” primary system, in which they hold an open primary, and the top 4 vote-getters move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation, so Murkowski’s Republican Challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, is likely to make it into the general, but things get complicated from there. Taking on an incumbent is never easy, but with strong support from GunVoters, Tshibaka has a chance. Whether she can convince those GunVoters that she’s a better choice, remains to be seen. Murkowski’s done her part to drive GunVoters away from her camp, but Tshibaka will need to work to win them over to her side. We don’t know enough about her yet to make a recommendation, but invite anyone with knowledge about her, to share it with us.
The biggest problem, politically speaking, with these Republican compromise deals, is that they feed the “hopelessness” faction of pro-gun voters.
These are the folks who say that Democrats and Republicans are just “two sides of the same coin,” or that the “system’s rigged” so voting doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately, these are self-fulfilling prophecies. By abdicating their responsibilities and not getting involved in the election process, they bring about the defeat of their own ideals when they fail to vote, or only cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning.
Don’t make this mistake.
Politics is a spectrum, like autism. Some politicians are far off to the edges of the scale, while others are somewhere toward the middle, and most swing like a pendulum, depending on which way the wind is blowing on a given day. It’s also a sad fact that many of them, from local City Council members to US Senators, and even Presidents, are not particularly bright. Having worked with, met with, and interviewed thousands of politicians, from all levels and all sides of the political spectrum, over the past 30+ years, I’ve been astounded by how many of them are total morons, with only one real skill – getting votes. Seriously, I would not hire some of these people to walk my dog or answer my office phones, yet they’ve somehow made their way into elected office, and in some cases, into the highest circles of power. The only good thing about these simpletons is also the primary bad thing: They’re easily manipulated. Since they have no real mind of their own, they depend heavily on other people to tell them what to say and do. If you or someone you trust are among that politician’s trusted advisors, then everything’s grand, but get a weasel in the hen house, or a politician who suddenly decides to make his own decisions, and things fall apart fast.
The sad fact is, to paraphrase Churchill, our political system is the worst ever devised, except for all of the others. It’s deeply flawed and imperfect, and it is susceptible to abuse, but it is the best available, and the more involved – and devoted to integrity – the people are, the better the system is.
Given all of that, the only way to get politicians that will vote the way you want them to vote is to first be sure that you fully understand your own political values.
What’s really important to you, and what doesn’t hit your radar? What issues are your “litmus test” issues, and how do you rank them on your personal priority list? For example, the Second Amendment might be your top priority, but you might also care about border security, abortion, economic issues, foreign affairs, etc., and the strongest supporter of the Second Amendment might be completely opposed to your position on all of your other top issues. They might be an avowed communist, or Nazi, or just a total moron on economics, or just a poor campaigner who has no chance of actually winning. So even though we often call ourselves “single-issue” voters, what we’re really saying is that our “single-issue” is a very high priority to us, but it can’t be the only criteria we look at.
Having a clear idea of your own political philosophy, is the first step to making solid choices in elections.
From there, we ideally want to work to elect politicians who completely agree with us on every issue, but that’s not very realistic, so those who agree with us on the preponderance of our highest priority issues, and who actually have a chance of winning. While there are valid reasons to tilt at windmills – to help push the debate in a certain direction, flush out charlatans, build name recognition for future races, promote a particular issue, etc. – generally, if you’re going to dedicate your precious vote, or time, money, and energy to a candidate, you want that candidate to have a chance of winning. If they are not electable, you’re giving the office to someone else.
Beyond basic issues and electability, there’s the issue of party and majorities. For example, right now, the US Senate is evenly divided, giving Democrats the functional majority, because they can count on Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties in their favor. That means the Senate floor is controlled by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and that’s a bad thing for gun owners. This November, that majority could shift, but it could be very close, and much depends on what happens between now and Election Day. With that reality, it could come down to Lisa Murkowski being the one-vote difference in whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate. Would GunVoters rather retain the backstabber and get Schumer out of his position of control, or fire the backstabber and keep Schumer in power? Personally, I’d prefer to fire Schumer and withhold my wrath for Murkowski for another day, but there are a whole lot of GunVoters whom I doubt could be convinced to push in that direction by me or anyone else.
The most important thing for GunVoters to remember though, is that, while 15 Republicans crossed over to support this bad legislation in the Senate, and 14 did the same in the House, 50 Democratic Senators and 220 Democratic Representatives also supported it, and most of them were complaining that it didn’t go far enough.
GunVoters are very good at punishing backstabbers and turncoats, but we need to be better at taking on our real enemies, like Mark Kelly, the co-founder of the Giffords gun control group. He’s up for reelection in Arizona, and he should be beatable, and beating him should be GunVoters’ number one objective this year.