Grassroots conservative activists are appalled, disgusted, and angered by the Republican barf bag budget bill which came in at an estimated cost of $1.3 trillion. It took 2,232 pages to detail that level of fiscal irresponsibility, and not one policy maker read it before voting on it. The Republicans are now — to steal Nancy Pelosi’s infamous line — the party of, “you can know what’s in it after we pass it.” And activists believe President Donald Trump betrayed them by signing it.

I have the honor of traveling around America, talking to thousands of Americans who are earnestly trying to make this nation better for their children and grandchildren. To be honest, they’ve put up with a lot when it comes to Donald Trump. Usually, people defend the President’s actions and rhetoric. Or, they simply don’t believe the accusations a liberal media hurls against him, like throwing spaghetti on a wall and hoping some of it will stick.

Not now.

After Trump signed this spending bill, his hard-core base knows he threw fiscal conservatism under the omnibus. They hate the Republicans in Congress and are very angry that their earlier concessions toward the President are not being honored by returned loyalty. They now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Republican Party has completely abandoned its own base.

And make no mistake, the level of betrayal is staggering. In 2015, Trump told Hugh Hewitt he’d shut down the government if they didn’t stop funding Planned Parenthood, yet this spending bill continues to give the organization approximately $500 million in taxpayer funding each year. Come to think of it, Trump may have done a better job fulfilling Hillary Clinton’s campaign promises than his own. Remember the oft-quoted promise to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it”? Well, not only is Mexico not going to pay for the wall, the spending bill only has enough allocated to build a small fragment and even includes an actual prohibition against building the wall with the prototypes that Trump inspected in San Diego. Oh, remember how Trump said he wanted 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents? Well, the new bill only increased funding for immigrant detention facilities and additional border patrol agents enough to allow 65 new agents.

I could go on and on, but I probably never could accurately convey the depth and breadth of Trump’s betrayal.

What is the Republican Party anymore? It’s not the party of fiscal responsibility. It’s not the party of limited government. It’s not the party that respects the sanctity of life. It’s not the party that believes in American sovereignty or even the rule of law. So, what then, is it?

No one seems to be able to answer that question, as far as I can tell. Today, it stands for nothing more than a label on a ballot. It must be dismantled from within, and rebuilt from the ground up… or it will be abandoned in some catastrophic manner.

Today, the formation of a third party has been made almost impossible by ballot access laws passed by the two parties in most states. This is intentional.   Both Democrats and Republicans like things exactly as they are. It is a system of political warfare where they can fight a national fight, and divide the spoils among themselves, while knowing that one or the other of them will always be in power. Republicans intentionally pushed this budget off until it was really too late to primary them. Their philosophy now seems to be “we want to be re-elected…for no particular purpose or agenda.” The philosophy of the Democratic Party seems to be, “we want power…so that we can turn America into another Marxist hellhole.” What kind of choice is that for the American people?

Thankfully, the Founders ensured we do have a choice, but we don’t have to select from the two options our political system hands down to us from on high. Like children with a pack of matches about to burn down your house, it’s not enough to say, “Don’t do that.” Mere warnings won’t stop this. It’s not enough to “elect better people” — though we should — because the game is rigged. Those in power have doused the place in gasoline, and this spending bill is a flame-thrower that will torch this nation.

Only by taking their power away can we prevent the looming catastrophe. And they only way to do that is by using Article V to call a Convention of States.

In their wisdom, our Founders saw a day when the government would grow so big and corrupt it would never voluntarily restrict itself. I doubt our Founders – which included “I cannot tell a lie” George Washington — could have predicted a political class that demonstrates this level of moral ineptitude and betrayal. However, we owe it to them and to this nation to restrict the power of these lying politicians.

Americans have put up with a lot since November 2016. Now, they know it’s time to take drastic actions to stop Trump and his political acolytes.

 

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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