How Billy Long Helped Reelect Barack Obama

The face of defeat. An easy victory was assured and Billy
helped screw it up.

It was the sure thing. All Republicans had to do was stick to their guns and the story line would play out. Republicans retake the White House!

A funny thing happened on the road to the 2012 elections. Republicans posing as Tea Party members took back control of the House of Representatives. At the time, this seemed like a good thing as Billy Long paraded around Southwest Missouri claiming he was "fed up" like many other self-proclaimed Tea Party Republicans. The rhetoric sounded good.

You tell 'em Billy!

Billy Long was on of Mitt Romney's earliest supporters in the House. The Southwest Missouri Congressman was noted in the Politico text messaging his fellow Republicans in the House begging them to get behind the liberal Republican Mitt Romney at all hours of the night. The problem was, Billy Long and many of these Republicans were Mitt Romney's, and for that matter most of the other Republican candidates as well, worst enemy.

You see, while Billy, John Boehner, and others talked a good game of reigning in federal spending, they did just the opposite when they got to Washington. This disaster began when Republicans in the House couldn't even come up with $100 billion in spending cuts. Billy along with many of his other Republicans felt spending our tax dollars to put stickers on Dale Earnhardt Jr's stock car was more important than coming up with the $100 billion in spending cuts. HR1 failed and Billy Long came home to the Joplin Tea Party using a line from Larry the Cable Guy, "we got'r done".

The truth is they barely got a third of it done. This was the omen that foreshadowed what was ahead.

The next test for Republicans was critical. If Republicans were going to challenge Obama on the mass amount of debt created in the first two years, they were going to have to stick their ground. They didn't.

John Boehner met in dirty backrooms, chain smoking, as he met with Democrats to come up with a deal. What followed was the single largest debt ceiling increase ever in the history of the United States. At first, Congressman Long appeared he was going to fight it, but pressure from the local paper, the Springfield News-Leader, along with Long's new blind admiration for Speaker Boehner soon had Congressman Long singing a different tune. Long voted for the single largest debt ceiling increase ever. What followed helped ensured Romney's defeat.

Billy Long and the Republicans continued to produce the trillion dollar deficits both years which were the norm under the first two years of Obama with Democrats in control of the House. Republicans, who were now in control of the purse had failed to reign in federal spending, and they actually encouraged more spending--funding Obama's agenda.

CNS reported:

Boehner lead Republicans to political suicide as he led passage of a $1.047 trillion bill funding the federal government through March 2013 that will permit funding for Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare--including the regulation that took effect on Aug. 1 that will require virtually all health plans in the United States to cover, without fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.

Congressman Long voted yes. Spending and the national debt was now off the table. Republicans were in control of the purse and they failed to stop the Obama agenda and the runaway spending. The case that could be made against Obama was suddenly watered down as Republicans played the role of RINOs and big spending Democrats--Billy Long included.

To beat Obama in 2012, the entire Obama record needed to be left to Obama and the Democrats to push the blame on. Yet, through Boehner's backroom deals and Tea Party frauds like Billy Long, the case against Obama was weakened.

What's amazing, is Republicans didn't learn anything from their bitter loss on Tuesday night. Not only does it appear John Boehner will continue to lead the Republicans in Congress, he is already talking working with Obama to raise taxes. It feels we are watching the death of the Republican party in front of our eyes.