The Audience Controls the Stage

In 2014, Eric Cantor became the first House Majority Leader in history to lose a congressional seat in a primary. And yet, apparently the loss did not teach him a solitary thing. Cantor recently said:

“They [social and fiscal conservatives] want quick fixes and bold moves. They want Hail Mary passes, when the real business of governing is grinding out a first down on the field, making incremental progress, getting sacked and fighting back until you finally cross the goal line. It’s slow, it’s messy and it’s how the game is played.”

Mr. Cantor, in his quest for Speaker of the House, stumbled onto a political reality:

The Audience Controls the Stage

Hollywood already understands this axiom—why else would a soap opera character suddenly become a transgender, after decades without any mention of this in the plot? Or in Calling the Midwife, a happily married man suddenly makes a move on a stranger in a man’s restroom? And the popular CSI is now just one of countless shows that embrace gay characters. Last year ABC-Disney announced its intent to feature Dan Savage in a sitcom. Dan Savage for Disney? You can look up on YouTube a clip of Mr. Savage spewing rage on high school students in 2012.

Hollywood has its own “Holy Orders.” Every hour of the day, Hollywood transmits its own homily, teaching, persuading and indoctrinating its disciples. And to what purpose? Once again: The audience controls the stage.

But back to Mr. Cantor. In 2014, the Congressman was removed by written instructions (aka “ballots”) by Virginia’s 7th Congressional District body of voters, the constituency. They did so for Cantor’s spending too much time at lobbyists’ cocktail parties and too little time in his district. Cantor apparently forgot that Virginia 7th Congressional District taxpayers paid his salary, not those seeking to influence legislative or government policy.

More Republican Establishment actors need to be removed from the stage if America is to survive. Change or repentance is in order when the Founders’ stated intention and model of self-government, based upon principle and moral absolutes, gets trashed and abandoned by those who run as conservatives but govern as liberals.

The Republican Party was given control of both houses of Congress by grass-roots, precinct-level conservatives in 2010 (Boehner) and 2014 (McConnell). Yet, Republican Establishment leaders sold the Grand Old Party and America down the river. In their hubris, moderate Republicans have single-handedly destroyed the “brand” that Ronald Reagan bequeathed to the Republican Party—limited government, lower taxes, deregulation of business and the political philosophy of “the one thing that government can do for me is leave me alone.”

Republican Establishment secularists lack a foundation or moral compass. Therefore, they err on fundamental questions about state, government, politics, liberty and justice. They have detached natural law—”the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—from common sense, as well as from the Founders’ presumption that freedom cannot exist in the absence of morality based upon God.

Scripture served as a key component in the Founders’ blueprint for how to structure society and judge how citizens should act within a society. As the philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, “There must be a fixed point to enable us to judge.”

But Republican secularists are on the verge of accomplishing for the GOP what the British monarch accomplished for America’s European settlers, as the Declaration of Independence states, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”

What created the Donald Trump political phenomenon of 2015-2016? It was Republican Establishment moderates, who refuse to lead or govern with principle. Every issue is open to compromise—the failure to defund Planned Parenthood in the fall of 2015 is the perfect example.

I agree with Mark Steyn’s assessment when he said, “I describe Republicans as a party of seat-warmers—until the pendulum swings and the Dems come roaring back. When the left wins, they’re in power; when the right wins, they’re in office, and that’s all.”

Barring a miracle on Nov. 8, 2016, America stands on the verge of losing its Constitution. What will a Hillary Clinton administration do to a once Biblical-based culture? Consider just five effects:

1. The loss “to keep and bear arms”
2. Continued IRS harassment of pro-life and Tea Party conservative groups
3. Another round of harassment of employers to provide abortion-causing drugs via company health plans
4. Revocation of the tax-exempt status for American churches who refuse to celebrate same-sex marriages
5. The loss of religious freedom and liberty

“Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will stand up for me against those who do iniquity?” (Ps. 94:16).

Charles Spurgeon asked, in his Treasury of David, “Where are our Luthers and our Calvins? A false charity has enfeebled the most of the valiant men of Israel. Our John Knox would be worth a mint at this hour, but where is he? Our grand consolation is that the God of Knox and Luther is yet with us, and in due time will call out His chosen champions.”

We simply need a Gideon or Rahab to stand.