DeMint book: What should we let go of?

Ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, no one in Congress was more frustrated than Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and it wasn’t just because his Republicans had been stripped of all power.  DeMint recounts the experiences of a conservative in a progressive-controlled government in his new book ‘The Great American Awakening.’

With Democrats in full control of both the legislative and executive branches, spending zoomed to new heights, setting world records for debt.

As the spending escalated, Democrats focused on searching for new “revenue”—code word for “tax increase.”

DeMint wanted less spending, but he also wanted a more common sense approach to legislation. If he balked over signing a bill he hadn’t read, he was accused of “holding” the bill—code word for “obstruction.”

Every time the popular South Carolina senator attempted any type of government reform, he was attacked by Democrats. What’s even more interesting—he was also attacked by status quo Republicans whose view of government service comprised sending home as much pork as humanly possible.

The worst attacks on DeMint came, of course, from media. There’s little difference between the Northeastern elitist publications and most downhome daily newspapers. Most branded media in the U.S. adopt a socialistic approach. Look to government for solutions to the human condition.

Media employees, mostly trained by socialist progressive professors whose livelihood depends on the government on some level, seek the righting of wrongs through bureaucrats and elected officials. DeMint’s practicality and his penchant for self-reliance were just too much for welfare state promoters to absorb.

DeMint witnessed the complete disconnect between the Washington elite and Main Street USA. He pointed to remarks by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (D). “Remarkably, Kerry claimed Americans were angry because they were uninformed,” DeMint wrote.

Kerry had told media, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth of what’s happening.”

Kerry didn’t realize how stupid his comments actually were—it was a simple slogan the Democrats rode to the final piece in their government takeover that began anew in 2006. The slogan, ‘Hope and Change’, was disemboweled as hope fell to radical change inspired by partisan political policy.

DeMint’s book should be a must read for any person who wants to really understand how government works. From the good old boys and girls who are appropriators to the conservatives DeMint helped elect through his Senate Conservatives Fund, the narrative provides the reader a seat at a table few of us will ever dine at in person.

One takeaway from what is really a very well-written engaging book is the necessity of having a national discussion about what we want from government. We need to ask the hard questions.

Are we willing to trade freedoms for welfare? Do we continue to spend as though there’s no tomorrow when we are well aware the day will come when the borrowing is no longer feasible? Do we wait until our streets are filled with angry youth whose reliance on the welfare state is so ingrained they believe the wealth of others should be redistributed by looting? Do we steel ourselves for the civil unrest that will follow if Democrats continue to push class warfare?

DeMint wrote, “The question Americans should be asking is not what else the federal government should do to solve our problems, but what the federal government must let go of to save our nation.”

Related Articles

Up and coming GOP leaders question relationship between people, Nanny State (The US Report)

ObamaCare: More than $700 million already committed to contractors (The US Report)

Spending, not entitlements, created huge deficit (The Washington Examiner)

New national debt data: It’s growing about $3 million a minute (L.A. Times)

(Commentary by Kay B. Day/August 23, 2011)

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