20131029

Open Letter to the GOP Congressional Delegation

Dear Republicans in the US Senate and the House of Representatives:

I am not a Republican.  You owe me no particular debt.  I may have voted for one or another of you while registered in several States over the years, but most of that time I was registered with a third party.  I remain so today. 

For some of you I had very great hopes.  Some of you then turned and betrayed those hopes. 

So don't get an inflated ego when I say that I generally despise the Democrats across from you, partly for their refusal to pass a Federal budget for the last 4 years they held a majority in the Senate, partly for their mischaracterization of your newer, more energetic, and dare I say more ideological members. 

You can yet earn my malediction, and the best way to do so is to cave in to those Democrats.  The next best way to do so is to turn on those newer, more energetic, and more ideological members of your own party.  They have led a dangerous, risky, odious effort to defund, delay, or repeal the PPACA.  They drew the line and they tried to defend it.  The leadership of your party has abandoned and abused them. 

If you're from Wyoming, you should be familiar with the name Lane Frost.  All he had to do was stay on the bull for eight seconds.  It took everything he had for those eight seconds, and he trained a (short) lifetime just to know what to do during those eight seconds, to last that long. 

Your job is easier than what Lane Frost had to do.  All you have to do is, well, nothing.  Just hold on, ignore the bucking, ignore the noise of the crowds.  Don't give in on a delay now, don't insist on defunding.  Just keep the law exactly as it is right now, and leave the Obama administration's people in place too.  Keep his team exactly as it is for a few more weeks.  Insist on no firings.  Pass no "if you like it you can keep it" bills.  Carve no new exceptions.  Mind your damned manners with your own caucus.

All you have to do is nothing but hold on. When you get thrown, the sand will break your fall, and there will be clowns unwittingly helping you to run to safety. 

If you don't even bother to climb on the bull, you are on the sidelines forever. 

Cordially,

Fûz