(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Even after being elected speaker of the House early Jan. 7, on the 15th ballot, Kevin McCarthy still has detractors on the Right.
Never mind that the promising, new, conservative rules to which he agreed establish a three-fifths majority to raise taxes, cap federal spending, require a balanced budget (eventually), mandate 12 separate appropriations bills rather than stage omnibus spending orgies, force a term-limits vote, and much more.
Regardless, some conservatives still hear McCarthy’s name and say: “Show me.”
How can McCarthy show conservatives, once and for all, that he is one of them—or, at least, will accept their agenda?
McCarthy should do what the gobsmackingly feeble and accommodationist Senate GOP “leader” Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fails to do on virtually every issue except judicial appointments: Unite Republicans, divide Democrats and invite members of the donkey party to make asses of themselves by confirming their woke, radical socialism.
McCarthy did this magnificently last week via two votes.
First, precisely one Democrat, Texas’s Henry Cuellar, joined 219 unanimous Republicans to require medical practitioners to care for any live baby who survived an abortion, despite its attempted murder in utero.
The advice of 99.5% of House Democrats (210 of 211) to such abortion-proof babies: “Drop dead.”
Second, a grand total of three House Democrats joined 219 unanimous Republicans who condemned physical attacks against pro-life establishments, organizations, and churches, including 41 domestic-terrorist acts that this measure specified.
The 209 other Democrats endorsed this pro-abortion vandalism, arson and other violence.
McCarthy should schedule similar bills. Each should unify his caucus, trigger internecine Democrat warfare and let the House minority expose its extremism.
Such legislation should:
- Declare that any baby who survives abortion is a live American citizen imbued with equal protection, due process, and all constitutional, civil and legal rights.
Democrats moaned that the aforementioned bill would endanger abortion-surviving babies by forcing abortionists to send them to hospitals via ambulance.
Fine.
Give Democrats a chance simply to agree with all Republicans that a baby who, somehow, foils an abortionist is not just a pile of medical waste but a living, breathing citizen and the youngest of all Americans.
- Forbid any federal agency from banning natural gas stoves, heaters, water heaters, electricity generators, Bunsen burners or any gas-powered appliance or device. No agency or federal employee could spend any time or money on gasophobic prohibitionism. Republicans would lock arms. Dems might split along green-energy and blue-collar lines.
- Order the Congressional Budget Office to calculate the amount of unspent COVID-19 money.
- Put 90% of those funds into reducing the national debt. The debt limit would not be increased until those funds were consumed.
- Keep 10% of these funds to investigate C-19’s origins, prevent future pandemics and for use as a rainy-day fund against any pandemic that might erupt.
- Halt federal law-enforcement-assistance funds to George Soros-style state-level attorneys general and local district attorneys who refuse to prosecute criminals. Phony, thug-hugging “prosecutors” who are de-facto public defenders—such as Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, Chicago’s Kim Foxx, St. Louis’s Kimberly Gardner, Los Angeles’s George Gascon and Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner—would have until Oct. 1 to demonstrate a change of attitude. After that, if they insist on wet-nursing career criminals, they must do so without federal crime-fighting dollars.
- Designate Antifa a domestic-terrorist group. After demolishing public and private property, torching police precincts, and otherwise perpetrating nationwide mayhem during and after the George Floyd riots, Antifa deserves the blackest of marks. Let’s see how many Democrats vote against their party’s Blackshirt brigade.
- Label MS-13 a terrorist organization. This Latin American gang beheads Americans for laughs. Republicans should give Democrats a chance to stop the laughter.
- Make the Trump tax cuts permanent. Republicans should draw this line in the sand and invite thinking Democrats to join them.
Such a legislative agenda should brighten America’s prospects, cheer conservatives and earn for Kevin McCarthy his rightist critics’ grudging respect, if not their love.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
