Hostage Holding Inside the Beltway

Over the past week, the world has watched as Israel and Hamas have exchanged prisoners. On the Israeli side, those prisoners were actual terrorists who committed crimes from planting car bombs, to throwing Molotov cocktails, to stabbing innocent civilians. Conversely, the people that Hamas held hostage and has released so far are mostly elderly women and small children who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sadly, that 3-for-1 exchange reminds me of some of the hostage-holding that takes place every day inside the Washington Beltway. Let’s look at a few prime examples...

To be elected as a Democrat and then to retain your seat, you are required to worship at the altar of Planned Parenthood, which is responsible for more than 300,000 fetal murders every year. If you dare say that life begins at conception or call partial-birth abortion barbaric, you will be demonized and ostracized in a New York minute.

For instance, just looking at senators with a last name starting with the letter B, the following Democrats received a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood: Baldwin, Bennett, Blumenthal, Booker, and Brown. All five Republicans – Barrasso, Blackburn, Boozman, Braun, and Britt – got a zero.

The same goes for any Democrat who doesn’t cow tail to the NEA, the UAW, and the AFL-CIO as well as the ACLU. Despite the fact that only 10.1% of Americans are union members, down from 33% in the 1950s, the teacher’s union and other organized labor groups carry a tremendous amount of weight inside the Democratic caucus.

LGBTQ+ issues? The Human Rights Campaign grades every member of Congress on whether or not they subscribe to a radical pro-gay rights agenda. In case you were wondering, 33 Democratic senators received a grade of 100% while the highest rated Republican was Susan Collins of Maine with 51%. Only three other GOP senators received a score above zero (Rand Paul – 8%; Mitt Romney – 7%; and Lisa Murkowski – 3%).

However, if you think that the GOP isn’t influenced by special interest groups too, you would be dead wrong. Just ask any Republican running for office which is more important: their college GPA or their grade from the NRA? And you had better not be caught on the naughty lists compiled by the Club for Growth or the Heritage Foundation among others.

Don’t get me wrong… I am not saying that there isn’t some value in lobbying groups publishing scorecards prior to Election Day so that voters can cast an informed ballot. After all, I use the one produced by the Family Research Council every election cycle and even distribute it to my Christian and conservative friends.

However, there comes a time when officeholders need to stop checking poll numbers and which way the political winds are blowing before casting their vote. Ideally, they would also ignore how much money is in their campaign coffers and where those donations came from before saying “Yea” or “Nay” on critical issues.

One can always hope, pray… and dream.