Can Barrasso be a "Flake"?

Want to know what loyalty is worth these days? Ask John Barrasso.

Former White House strategist and neo-nationalist Steve Bannon declared war on Wyoming’s Junior Senator. Bannon identified Barrasso as a target, announcing on Fox News, “Nobody is safe. We’re coming after all of them and we’re going to win.”

Bannon recruited candidates to challenge Barrasso in next year’s Republican primary. One is Jackson resident Foster Friess. He says women should hold their knees together instead of using birth-control. The other is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother Eric Prince, founder of the scandal-ridden Blackwater, who got filthy-rich off the war in Iraq.

In other states, Bannon-like candidates include a convicted felon and one known for using racial slurs.

Wyoming Republicans were primed for Bannon. They recently elected rightwing extremist Frank Eathorne as party chair. Eathorne responded to Bannon’s challenge with a shot over Barrasso’s bow. Barrasso, Eathorne said, has some votes that need explaining.

Can’t you just hear John? “Why me Steve Bannon. Why have you forsaken me?” John must be immersed in the Book of Job. “For the thing I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I have no rest, but trouble comes.” Job’s friends answered him as Barrasso’s friends might. “Affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground.”

Bannon’s challenge didn’t materialize out of thin air. If Barrasso thinks Trump isn’t behind the Bannon ploy, he’s as silly as he looks when photo-bombing Mitch McConnell.  

No one sold his soul to the Republican Party at such a bargain price. Look up “partisan.” There’s a photo of John Barrasso standing to the right of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It seems he is frozen in time in that position.

Being called loyal doesn’t begin to honor the role John played all these years in the Senate. He’s been loyal even when it hurt his own constituents. He’s been loyal even when he knew millions of Americans were going to be hurt by his support of GOP legislation.

Unlike Tennessee Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, John has refused to question Trump and acknowledge what is obvious. The emperor has no clothes.

British politician Neil Kinnock could have tipped John off. “Loyalty,” he warned, “is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards.”

Senator Barrasso is at a crossroad. He can choose to do what Luther Strange did when Bannon went after him in the recent Alabama Republican Primary. Senator Strange, the incumbent, decided to make it a contest over who can be the most loyal to Trump. Bannon campaigned for Roy Moore, a man twice removed from the Supreme Court for improprieties, painting Strange as a part of the establishment as he will do to Barrasso.

Trump and the GOP leadership endorsed Strange, which Bannon used to the incumbent’s disadvantage. Bannon told Trump-loving voters that the GOP leadership, which includes Barrasso, “think you’re a pack of morons, they think you’re nothing but rubes.” Imagine this scenario playing out across Wyoming in the 2018 GOP primary.

Bannon beat Luther Strange and he will beat Barrasso if John plays the game as it was played by the Alabama incumbent.

The other choice Barrasso has is to travel the road Senators Flake and Corker chose. Take up John McCain’s mantel. Be honest about Trump’s fitness. Join them. Sound the alarm. Trump poses a danger to the country. Barrasso knows it as much as anyone.  

Hey John, appeal to the fundamental patriotism of Wyoming people and announce you’ll no longer tolerate the lies and the incompetence. Announce you’ll not continue to support a mentally ill president who can’t disavow neo-Nazis. Be honest about how dangerous Trump is to America’s future.

Stop defending the indefensible. Return to your moderate roots. Shed the rightwing shtick. Demonstrate loyalty to your country and your constituents, instead of your party. 

Be courageous John Barrasso, and show the voters that there is something bigger at stake than ego. The future of the U.S. is on the ballot in 2018.

It’s like the boy who murdered both parents asking the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.

All three Wyoming delegates to Congress have signed on as co-sponsors to a proposed constitutional amendment allowing states to veto federal laws and regulations they dislike.

According the Casper Star-Tribune, Rep. Cynthia Lummis said, “I am fighting to return to the rightful owner — the states and the individuals — the power that the federal government has grabbed,” Lummis said in a media release Wednesday. “That is what our founders envisioned, what our Constitution requires and what the people of Wyoming demand.”

There is a noticeable bit of irony in a member of Congress complaining about a “federal power grab.” It’s like the boy who murdered both parents asking the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. If there has been a federal power grab, haven’t these three fault-finders been accomplices to the crime?

But what really ought to demand some explanation is the claim their radical proposal “is what our founders envisioned.” That is true only if what is meant by “our founders” are those who gave us the original Articles of Confederation.” If historical facts have any value in this debate, it should be recalled these “founders” gave us a fatally flawed system of government lasting only a few years.

The Articles of Confederation were enacted by Congress November 15, 1777, ratified  March 1, 1781 and then replaced in 1791 by the Constitution we have had now for 220 years. So, to which of these “founders” do our Congress-people refer? Their proposal to allow the states to veto federal law would cause one to believe they consider those who gave us the short-lived Articles of Confederation to have been the founders. The Articles read as does their proposal. Article II says, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. Article III continued, “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other….” That “firm league of friendship” was a failure.

Tongue in cheek but not without relevance is the possibility our Members of Congress are thinking of those who established the Confederacy in 1861 as “founders.” The Preamble of the Constitution of the Confederate States actually sounds like what they have in mind.

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

In a more common view, the term “founders” of course refers most accurately to those who quickly recognized the weaknesses the Articles of Confederation tossing them out along with the bath water after less than a decade. Under the Articles, regional differences among the states left the nation disabled then as they would today. The founders who gave us the current US Constitution did so after quickly realizing state’s rights were distinct from the common needs of a nation.

Perhaps things have changed so much that the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the Confederacy make better sense to Senators Enzi and Barrasso and Rep. Lummis. It is, however, a dangerous experiment, a form of Russian roulette. The Tea Party that ultimately gave us a Constitution which survived 220 years of wars, depressions, and Manifest Destiny should not be easily discarded by a Tea Party that has been around for only a couple of long years.