GOP Establishment Moving Too Cautiously, But It’s Time to Go Big, or Go Home

There is a disconnect in Washington D.C. between the Republican establishment and the voters who entrusted them power to undo the disastrous Obama years. The GOP was handed all the power on November 8th, but many of them are already treading too cautiously on getting things done. Our vote was a message for them to go big and bold.

But the day after the election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was already restraining the party’s effectiveness:

“Overreaching after an election is, generally speaking, a mistake. I don’t think we should act as if we’re going to be in the majority forever.”

This immediate weakness set a bad tone for Trump voters whose top priorities are getting Obamacare repealed and fixing the broken immigration system. However, as The Wall Street Journal noted, Republicans “quickly splinter over the details” and have “different time frames and political constraints that suggest they may not always be in sync.”

This attitude is at the very heart of the risk-averse tendency of the GOP establishment in D.C. They think the goal is not to piss off the Democrats — the party whose top leaders Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi know the goal is when you have power, USE IT to accomplish your agenda. Remember Reid and the nuclear option to move past filibusters on federal judges and the like? On the other hand, McConnell reinstated a 60 vote measure in one of his first moves after the GOP won the Senate. The Democrats know that the GOP is risk averse.

Sure, McConell is right; Republicans won’t be in power forever. That’s why it’s time to get moving on accomplishing what the voters want. It’s time Republicans have the fire Democrats display for its agenda. (Need I remind them of the last eight years?)

In the end, it will have been better to say we went big and bold and got big agenda items accomplished rather than spend another second kowtowing to the Left.