Joe Manchin is the only person to rival Glenn Youngkin for the man of the hour. Almost single-handedly, he’s holding up the Democrats’ cherished welfare state spending spree, and sending his fellow Democrats into fits of mutual recrimination. (Missouri Representative Cori Bush even called Manchin “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant.” Ouch!)
It’s been delightful to watch.
Recently, good ole Joe Manchin has been in the news again. He’s been the victim of yet more harassment from leftists, in this case “climate activists.” They tried to prevent him from driving to work, and they even suggested (absurdly) that bloodthirsty Joe tried to run them over with his SUV.
Note to Joe: The Left hates you!! Why would you want to have anything to do with such people?
Manchin has also been laying down some harsh truths about fiscal overreach. As he points out, in the blink of an eye we’ve spent more allegedly battling COVID than we did fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. To make matters worse, inflation is setting records and the Fed has few tools left with which to tame it.
And now the Democrats want to up the ante on spending? C’mon, man!
Joe also stood up recently to the progressive activists disguised as journalists at CNN. He pointed out, in the wake of the Democrats’ recent reversals of fortune in Virginia and elsewhere, that this just isn’t a left-wing country. If anything, in fact, he says it leans to the Right.
Wow! And he’s a Democrat? Why, Joe?
Manchin realizes, as almost all his Democratic colleagues do not, that Americans didn’t elect Joe Biden and a Democratic House and Senate because they love socialism and wokeness. They did it because they were persuaded, by a five-year campaign of calumny, that Trump=Beelzebub. They expected Biden and the Democrats to restore a sense of normalcy and calm.
How’s that turning out, Joe?
All of this raises the tantalizing question of why Joe Manchin persists in being a Democrat and in caucusing with Democrats in the Senate, especially given the deep red hue of his home state of West Virginia.
Only Joe can resolve that mystery, but one suspects that a straightforward appeal to reason, to common decency, or even to narrow self-interest wouldn’t be enough to tip the scales inside Joe’s head and turn him into a McConnellite Republican. Possibly the only thing that could accomplish that would be . . . more object lessons in the sheer nastiness and lunacy of the people Joe currently calls “colleagues.”
So hey, “climate activists,” “immigrant advocates,, and other assorted neo-Marxist loons—keep up the good work throwing yourselves under the wheels of Joe Manchin’s Maserati. Although you assuredly don’t realize it, you might be helping to build a (permanent?) Republican majority in the Senate.
And, on that note, if you need more cash for bullhorns, count me in!