Fox News host Laura Ingraham torched GOP leadership on Wednesday, accusing them of being “far more comfortable cutting deals to satisfy Democrats than they are with working to satisfy their conservative base.”
In her “Ingraham Angle” opening monologue, the host said Republican voters are “disillusioned and demoralized” and claimed the Republican Party “seems to actually detest them.”
To make her case, she pointed to the 12 Republican senators who voted in favor of “the deceptively titled” Respect for Marriage Act.
As BizPac Review reported, the legislation “passed 61-36, with 12 Republicans joining with Democrats after a filibuster was defeated and three amendments offered by GOP senators who oppose the bill were rejected.”
Joining the Dems were Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Rob Portman (Ohio), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Todd Young (Ind.).
The bill states it “repeals and replaces provisions that define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex with provisions that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law,” but Ingraham argues “the law will actually end up gutting the religious liberty rights across the country.”
And that’s not the only area in which GOP leadership is likely to fail its base.
“We just learned this week that Republicans are going to cave on another huge issue, spending,” Ingraham stated. “Now, on December 16, the government will run out of money.”
As Ingraham noted, Congress has three options come Dec. 16: 1) shut the government down and “cease federal spending on all nonessential services”; 2) “pass a temporary spending bill in the form of what’s called a continuing resolution”; or 3) pass a “ginormous spending bill, that would fund the entire government for the coming year.”
It is the third option, says Ingraham, that “both [Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell apparently prefer” and it “puts Republicans in a box.”
“With spending questions off of the table, they’ll lose most of the real leverage they had to advance their own priorities in the new year,” she explains.
Gone would be any hope House Republicans — and Republican voters — may have had of reigning in spending on progressive pet projects such as the climate or Ukraine, at a time when Americans are suffering under soaring inflation.
Yet McConnell has stated, “there’s widespread agreement that we’d be better off with an omnibus than a CR [continuing resolution].”
“Widespread agreement among whom?” Ingraham asked. “Certainly not the Republican Party.”
According to Ingraham, McConnell prefers that third option “because it makes the job easier.”
“It means, in the end, he won’t have to deal with conservatives quite as much in the new year, certainly not in the House,” she stated.
Ingraham cited a Politico piece that stated, “McConnell also knows that if he reaches a deal this month, then outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi can be trusted to push it through the House.”
“Can the same be said about McCarthy in January?” the outlet asked. “As one GOP senator told POLITICO this week, ‘Nobody wants to hand Kevin McCarthy a grenade with the pin already pulled.’”
“Wow,” Ingraham exclaimed. “He [McConnell] trusts Pelosi more than McCarthy.”
“Washington swamp really is a trough with more and more pigs feeding at it every day,” Ingraham said. “Chief among them are our defense contractors who get an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top from Mitch.”
But, says Politico, “McConnell has a price for his cooperation: He is insisting that defense spending receive a bigger boost than nondefense spending.”
“Okay, you cannot make up how irresponsible this is,” Ingraham stated. “This is not the 1980s when the military leaders were reliably conservative, unfailingly traditional. Now our military leadership hates us all.”
“McConnell should demand transparency and accountability for the nearly $20 billion worth of military hardware and humanitarian assistance we already sent to Ukraine,” she continued. “He should be demanding an audit of Pentagon spending there, not rubber-stamping what the White House wants in this new package.”
“When you total it up with the new supplemental, we’ll have spent $100 billion in the year 2022 to 2023,” she said of Ukraine. “And we have an open border, we have tens of thousands of our own vets living in gutters across America. And we don’t help them? But $100 billion to Ukraine. This is just disgusting.”
She went on to call out the 19 GOP senators who voted to advance the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.
“When he agreed to this,” she said, “McConnell, et al., squandered all of the leverage they could have used to stop the climate change bill, which we remember passed with zero Republican votes in August.”
And then the GOP wonders why the Republican Party isn’t unified.
“They probably are going to blame Trump for that,” Ingraham said. “But if Mitch McConnell’s team wants to blame someone, their boss is going to need to look in the mirror.”
“McConnell just comes off as totally disinterested in the people who actually win his party elections,” she continued.
“Now, The Angle has praised McConnell repeatedly as a formidable fighter for judicial confirmations,” she stated. “But he uses his talents too often to help liberals just spend more money. Of course, being part of the establishment means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“Now, there’s going to come a time, probably, in the next few years, when Mitch McConnell is going to need conservative support for the priorities and his candidates, and that support won’t be there because of the cynical, selfish bargain like the one he’s making on this omnibus,” she said. “In the end, ramming through reckless spending and stabbing conservatives in the back, is neither smart politics nor good for America.”
Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who sits on the Senate Budget and Appropriation Committees, believes a temporary extension on Dec. 16 is not the way to go.
“This time we’d be handing the keys over to Nancy Pelosi, who we just fired, to do all of the spending according to what they want to do,” he explained. “It’s been on display for the last two years. We do this all the time. Laura, last year, we didn’t complete the spending until March. So, there’s no rush.”
“There’s no good reason to give the Dems, Nancy Pelosi as her swan song, another year of what we’ve been contending with,” he added.
Pointing to trillion-dollar deficits, he asked, “Why would we, now, when politics have changed in the House, let Nancy Pelosi put her fingerprints on this when you don’t need to? This place has gotten so out of line, it’s just hard to imagine where we are as a country.”
