Democrats are committing suicide by joining Lewis boycott

by Kenneth Timmerman

Democrats joining the puerile food fight Rep. John Lewis started with the President-Elect may soon live to regret it.

Donald Trump has promised a vigorous legislative agenda for his first one-hundred days, and has the majorities in Congress to make good on that promise. Democrats who continue to whine and pout, calling him “illegitimate,” may soon find themselves on the wrong side of history.

Here’s what is likely to occur between now and mid-April:

• President Trump will reverse hundreds of Obama’s executive orders, shredding big portions of the former President’s “legacy.”

• Republicans will pass the Obamacare repeal and replace measure.

• Republicans will pass a tax reform package that includes middle class tax cuts and a significant reduction of the corporate income tax.

• Republicans will fund the border wall, and President Trump will start to open bids from contractors.

If Congress does nothing beyond this in the next two years, the economy will grow, jobs will return to the rust belt states, and Democrats will suffer a “shellacking” in the mid-term elections.

And if Donald Trump succeeds in building the border wall (and yes, Mexico will ultimately pay for it through a remittance tax, tariffs, or other measures), he will be re-elected in 2020 with big numbers.

As Mike Huckabee said on Fox Business on Tuesday, Democrats are “never going to be happy his election” because of their “personal animosity,” and that is a huge mistake. Why? Because as the new President succeeds with his policies, American voters will have little patience with such critics.

I’m not suggesting that Rep. Lewis is about to lose re-election, given that he represents “one of the most consistently Democratic districts in the nation.”

But some of the Democrats who have decided to join him in boycotting Friday’s inauguration could find themselves facing primary opponents. Among the most vulnerable in this regard is newly-elected Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md).

After his disastrous failure in the Obamacare roll-out as Lieutenant Governor, Brown lost his bid to become Governor in 2014 in heavily-Democrat Maryland. How could that happen? Because members of his own party turned against him and voted for the Republican or just stayed home.

I witnessed Mr. Brown’s unpopularity when black Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Lollar and I won the endorsement in the 2014 primary of a pre-eminent black pastors and business association in Prince Georges County. (I was Lollar’s running mate).

I asked the leaders of this group why they were endorsing a Republican ticket over Mr. Brown, and they responded almost unanimously: because Anthony Brown had arrogantly ignored them over the previous eight years as Lieutenant Governor. He was out of touch and took them for granted.

Those same black leaders are going to benefit from lower tax rates, as well as from the reduction in the number of illegal aliens with their drain on public school and public health resources. They are not going to take kindly to politicians who tell them these benefits are somehow “illegitimate,” because they have a personal beef with the President who brought them about.

Under Obama, Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats in Congress and in state legislatures because of his unpopular policies. For Democrats to continue opposing President Trump when he enacts popular policies is a strong indicator they have suicidal tendencies.

If these suicidal Democrats don’t seek treatment, the people will dish it out to them at the ballot box.

They face the same choice Bill Clinton faced after the 1994 midterms: embrace success, or go down as a failure.

Three weeks before last November’s election, Rep. Lewis tweeted out a quote from “Walking with the Wind,” his memoire of the civil rights movement. “We are one people, one family, one house – the American house. We must learn to live together as brother & sister or we will perish as fools.”

Those are wise and humble words. Rep. Lewis and his fellow boycotters would do well to heed them.

First published in The Hill.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a Donald Trump supporter. He was the 2012 Republican Congressional nominee for MD-8 and is the author of Deception: The Making of the YouTube Video Hillary & Obama Blamed for Benghazi, published by Post Hill Press.