"... if [Republican] leaders really are willing to lie, even to their own representatives, why should ... voters expect to be treated with any more respect ...?"

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Rep. Stutzman learned what most Americans already knew: Too many politicians lie

And if the new GOP majority doesn't improve things, it won't deserve to keep power

By Kevin Leininger, December 30, 2014

Politicians are so widely perceived as liars that even their obvious whoppers have become mundane. You mean you can't really provide health care to millions of uninsured Americans without increasing cost? We can't keep our current coverage even if we like it?

Oh, well . . .

When politicians lie to each other and are called out publicly for it, however, it's still unusual enough to be considered news -- at least when the one making the charge is a relatively obscure congressman from northeast Indiana and the alleged prevaricators just happen to be the leaders of his own party.

Nobody really comprehends the entire 1,600-page, $1.1 trillion "cromnibus" bill approved by the House and Senate earlier this month with rare bipartisan support. The bill's very name hints at its schizophrenic nature, with its omnibus spending portion funding most of the federal government through next year and its continuing resolution portion funding the Department of Homeland Security only into March, when new Republican majorities presumably will address President Obama's unilateral attempt to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

But in the real world, lying does not become more honorable or acceptable simply by becoming more commonplace. And so Rep. Marlin Stutzman's claim that he was duped by House GOP leaders into supporting the bill caught the attention of voters and journalists nationwide. Stutzman, who represents Indiana's 3rd District, said he provided a crucial vote allowing allow House leaders to bring the bill to the floor only after they assured him cromnibus would be replaced by a shorter-term continuing resolution.

"I was very surprised and even more disappointed to see the cromnibus back on the floor," he said in a statement. "The American people deserve better."

Indeed they do, in many ways. Unfortunately, there is no indication the incoming Republican majority is any more serious about providing it than President Obama and the Democrats have been.

GOP leaders -- who should lead the fight to restore fiscal sanity and conservative principles when the new Congress convenes in January -- wasted no time in throwing Stutzman under the bus, with an aide to House leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who allegedly made the bogus promise to Stutzman, claiming that "at no time was (such a promise) communicated by the leadership team."

Which means, of course, that if GOP leaders aren't lying, Stutzman is. Neither possibility will, or should, inspire confidence in voters who entrusted control of Congress to the party that still claims to support traditional American values.

More than a century ago German leader Otto von Bismarck remarked that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." And he was right, of course: Democratic leaders had to bribe some of their own delegation to secure the party-line passage of Obamacare, just as GOP House leaders had to twist their own members' arms and work with the other party to pass cromnibus through a Democrat-controlled Senate and avoid a possible government shut down for which history indicates they would be blamed.

As of next month, however, there will be no need for subterfuge; no justification for lies. With solid majorities in both the House and Senate, the GOP should present a bold, unambiguous and united challenge to cynical, expansionist, debt-happy government, working with the president when possible and blocking him when necessary while laying out the conservative vision needed to energize voters in the 2016 presidential race.

If the Republican Party is unwilling or powerless to do at least that much, it is little better than the party it wants to replace. And if its leaders really are willing to lie, even to their own representatives, why should should voters expect to be treated with any more respect -- or be willing to accept it quietly any more than Stutzman was?
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