Cheap Seats 2022 By Rich Trzupek

Cue the Minister of Silly Walks - 01/26

By Rich Trzupek
  January 19, 2022 marked a milestone for President Biden’s administration. Despite what I’m sure were serious misgivings among the Comrade in Chief’s handlers and therapeutic drug advisors, the Man Who Faced Down Corn Pop was released to (finally) answer questions posed by the White House press corps.
  To no one’s surprise, those answers were brilliant and inciteful according to much of the legacy media. Many praised the Prez for holding the longest press conference in the history of the White House. I’ve no idea if that is true or not and don’t much care. Pretty sure that I, or the vast majority of our elected representatives, could stand on their feet for two hours while uttering at mostly coherent responses to questions. Holding the longest press conference in White House history is about as substantial a metric as figuring out which president had the worst case of diarrhea in White House history. (I’m betting Taft, but have no actual evidence to back that up.)
  At one point, the Great Unifier chided Republicans, targeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.  Biden said that the fundamental question is “what's Mitch for?” By extension, that translates to “what are Republicans for?” Fortunately, I am here to answer that question.
  When one considers the state of the modern day Republican and Democrat parties today, the most striking difference is that one party demands almost fanatical uniformity of thought and the other welcomes – more or less – alternative points of view. In case you missed the point, the Republicans are the latter and Democrats are the former.
  For example, are there pro-life Democrats? Probably – somewhere. But being pro-life is pretty much a kiss of death in that party. On the other hand, there are plenty of pro-choice Republicans. I personally wish they changed their minds about the sanctity of life beginning with conception, but I’m willing to absorb their – in my view erroneous position – so long as they bring more positives to the table overall than their opponents. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.
  There are plenty of Buckley-like conservatives and libertarians under the Republican banner who believe that the nation would be better off if we de-criminalized the possession and use of most recreational drugs. I’m included in that group. When you allow any commercial product, be it drugs or booze or whatever, to be distributed in the free market you drastically reduce the value of that product and that drastically reduces the violence associated with controlling its distribution.
  Within the Republican party, there are plenty of people who disagree with me on this point. That’s OK – in the Republican party. You want to pursue the Reagan-era War on Drugs policy? Go for it. I don’t think it will work any better now than it did then, but – as much as I admire Dutch – this is one issue for which his attempted field goal was wide right.
  Contrast that with how the Soros-funded project to elect wildly liberal district attorneys and attorneys general has played out. Leftist ideology that presumes that all but the most heinous of crimes are forgivable and treatable and should not be punishable predominate the governing legal structure in major metropolitan areas across the United States like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and many others. A few Democrat voices have recently opposed these destructive policies, the mayor of San Francisco London Breed being the most prominent, but most all the rest are radio silent. Spoiler alert: law enforcement still requires “enforcement” to work.
  So Joe, here ya go: you’ll need giant John Cleese like silly walk steps to miss the main points. Good luck with that. But, for the record, here’s what Republicans are for these days:
  We’re for freedom of expression and we are for the idea that private big tech companies who restrict freedom of expression ought to be held accountable under the First Amendment.
  We’re for the Second Amendment. Period.
  We’re for life, which for most of us is a spiritual mystery that begins at the moment of conception and ends, in this plane of time and space, at the moment of natural, human death.
  We’re for the idea that talent and effort should be rewarded as part of a free market, while society should simultaneously do our best to increase opportunity for the less talented while never, ever incentivizing lack of effort. We are for the idea that there should be no free lunches if you have the ability to feed yourself.
  We believe that one may be formed from many.
  We are certain that the back-door curve is one of the most wicked weapons in any control pitcher’s arsenal.
  We are not ashamed about the “one under God” part of our “one nation” declaration.
  We are for America, warts and all, and we believe that the tremendous good that America has had on the life of its citizens and that lives of so many other people whom Americans have protected over the course of our nation’s existence cannot be denied.
  We are for taking pride in America’s past and we are for spreading American ideals and exceptionalism throughout the world in the future.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com