Some conservatives have found themselves in a very odd place after the passing of the new government spending bill last week — agreeing with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Both congresswomen expressed disappointment with the bill and its passage, especially provisions which raise the cap on campaign spending and gut parts of the Dodd-Frank Act.
“Opposition to government bailouts of Wall Street is not a liberal or conservative issue,” Sen. Warren said. “The current law — the one about to be repealed — was put in place years ago, because after the 2008 financial collapse, people of all political persuasions were disgusted at the prospect of ever again having to use taxpayer dollars to rescue big banks from their own bad decisions.”
And normally, you can count on GOPers to disagree with Warren on almost, if not every, issue. But this time, even they can’t fault her logic, the Huffington Post pointed out.
“So help me God,” wrote Leon Wolf of Red State, a conservative blog, “I have no way to refute the basic point that the Democrats are making about the CRomnibus fight right now. In fact, I might even go so far as to say they are right.”
He continued,
“Regardless of whether this is, in fact a boondoggle to Wall Street or not, it is fatally easy for the Democrats to portray it as such. When the people here ‘roll back a part of the Dodd-Frank act of 2010 that limits the abilities of big banks to trade certain financial instruments known as swaps — contracts that allow the banks to hedge their risks or to speculate’ ([Wolf] literally copied and pasted this description because again, [his] brain refuses to make itself care about the particulars) what they hear is ‘blah blah blah allows Wall Street to speculate.’ And what they know is, this is not what Republicans were sent to Washington to do.”
Wolf wasn’t the only conservative experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance over his agreement with Warren. Dustin Siggins of Hot Air wrote that the “end times are upon us” because he found himself “in agreement with not just Senator Elizabeth Warren … but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi…”
Warren’s stance even has some of them calling for her to run for president, a sign that maybe Hell has, in fact, frozen over.
“I hope that Sen Warren will run for president in 2016 to force a national conversation on the Washington-Wall Street power nexus,” wrote Rod Dreher of The American Conservative. “Hillary Clinton won’t talk about it. You know no republican presidential candidate will talk about it … We all need to be talking about it. A populist who talks like Elizabeth Warren and really means it is a Democrat a conservative like me would consider voting for, despite her social liberalism.”
And while Sen. Warren keeps telling any and everyone who asks that she is not running for president, maybe hearing those on the Right ask her to throw her hat in the ring will make her reconsider. It’s obvious that America desperately needs an escape from the Clinton and Bush dynasties, and any politician that can win over progressives AND the reddest of the red-state voters, could provide just that.
