Guest Editorial
By Lawrence Sellin, PhD | MAY 4, 2016
An open letter to Brent Bozell’s open letter
On April 26, 2016 Breitbart published Brent Bozell's open letter asking Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Phyllis Schlafly and other conservatives to withdraw their endorsements of Donald Trump.
Mr. Bozell, you ask "Does Donald Trump mean a word he says?"
Well, Mr. Bozell, we already know that the Republican Party doesn't mean a word that it says.
For example, prior to the 2014 mid-term elections, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking about Barack Obama's executive amnesty, said: "We will do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen: Defunding, going to court, injunction. You name it. It's wrong. It's illegal. And for so many reasons, and just the basic fabric of this country, we can't allow it to happen and we won't let it happen. I don't know how to be any stronger than that. I'm telling you, everything we can do to stop it we will."
After the 2014 election, when voters gave his party control of Congress, the Republicans "rewarded" their constituents by enthusiastically facilitating the funding and implementation of Obama's "illegal" executive amnesty.
According an article in the left-wing outlet Politico and reported by Breitbart, Republican House Speaker John Boehner held secret negotiations with Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, leading up to his decision to flip-flop and fund Obama's executive amnesty; including a pre-hashed out deal to use the hoopla around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's March 3, 2015 address to Congress over Iran's nuclear ambitions as political cover to sneak in the extraordinarily controversial vote.
As part of this effort, the former chiefs of staff to House Speaker John Boehner and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, through a group called the American Action Network, spent $400,000 for advertisements aimed at pressuring House conservatives to support Obama's executive amnesty and fund it in its entirety through the end of the fiscal year.
On the same day as Netanyahu's speech, the Republican-led House of Representatives caved to the demands of Democrats and passed a "clean" Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill by 257-167 with a majority of Democratic votes. Seventy-five Republicans voted to pass the clean bill, 167 voted against passage. The measure provided full funding of the DHS through September 30th, the end of the federal fiscal year, leaving Obama's executive amnesty untouched.
In essence, the seventy-five Republicans, who joined all House Democrats to fund Obama's executive amnesty, aided and abetted the shredding of the Constitution by giving Obama the funding and future permission to rewrite federal law as he sees fit.
And what about Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, Mr. Bozell?
Is it not Ted Cruz, who has joined the Republican establishment to thwart the will of the American people by back-room manipulation of the electoral process? Is that what you endorse, Mr. Bozell?
Was it not Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, who voted in favor of the Corker/Cardin Amendment, which essentially "pre-approved" the Iran nuclear deal by turning the treaty provision of the Constitution on its head, changing ratification from the constitutionally-mandated 67-vote for approval to a 67-vote for denial?
Was it not Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, who penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed with House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) endorsing Obama's trade agenda -describing the TPP as an "historic" agreement that "would mean greater access to a billion customers for American manufacturers, farmers and ranchers?"
Like many in the Washington DC chattering class, Mr. Bozell, you just don't get it.
The November 2014 election was not an endorsement of the Republican Party, but a repudiation of Obama's dramatic expansion of government power. The voters demanded that Congress stop his fundamental transformation of America, restoring the Constitutional balance of power and ending the Executive Branch abuses against the citizenry. Yet, the Republican leadership and its toadies in Congress undercut that vote and became complicit in the enactment of Obama's unconstitutional policies.
And you speak about "sanity," Mr. Bozell? To paraphrase Albert Einstein, again trusting the Republican establishment and expecting different results would be insane.
Many Americans now believe that we are no longer citizens of a republic, but subjects of a reigning oligarchy composed of a self-absorbed permanent political class, which services the interests of wealthy financiers at the expense of the wider population. They maintain their authority by an ever-expanding and increasingly intrusive government and use a compliant media to manipulate public perception and opinion in order to maintain the illusion of democracy.
The two most important issues of the 2016 election are non-partisan.
(1) The federal government and the media are, as institutions, hopelessly corrupt.
(2) The United States has elections, but we no longer have representative government.
None of the problems facing the country can be solved effectively without first confronting those two issues. Any candidate addressing them directly will capture the majority of voters on both sides of the political center.
But let's be honest for a moment, Mr. Bozell. It is really not Donald Trump's words that the establishment fears, and it is not only the loss of political power, but they fear the revelations of past government conduct that might emerge, and the potential for investigation and prosecution.
Perhaps it is you, Mr. Bozell, who should do the "courageous thing," and stand with the American people and not with the corrupt political-media establishment.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution." He receives email at [email protected]
