Stand Up and Cheer

The House of Representatives Chamber was not exactly full yesterday for Volodomir Zelenskii’s speech.

Roughly half of the Republicans failed to appear. I guess that Christmas shopping was more important to them. Those GOP Congressmen who actually showed up for their jobs that day sat stone-faced and didn’t bother to stand and applaud Zelenskii. It’s not like he had the courage to remain in Kyiv last February when the mighty Russian Army was bearing down on his city. “I don’t want a ride out of Kyiv. I want weapons to defend it.”

However, when Kevin McCarthy becomes House Speaker in January, Ukraine will not get a “blank check” for military and other aid from the US Treasury. “America First!”

Twenty years ago, the Republicans were all in favor of foreign entanglements. US forces invaded Iraq to ferret out those Weapons of Mass Destruction and to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. I was driving for 75 minutes each day to supervise construction at Methacton High School. My company pick-up had only a weak AM radio. For most of the daily drive, I was forced to listen to Conservative Talk Radio featuring Rush Limbaugh and pre-Fox TV Sean Hannity. Hannity’s intro music was the Country Classic “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. If you weren’t four-square behind tens of thousands of our boys being shipped half-way around the world to seek WMDs that never existed in a country that never did us any harm, you weren’t a Real American! Lee Greenwood wasn’t singing to you.

I guess that Republicans only support wars that they started.

Courage supersedes politics every time. If I were a Republican Congressman (perish the thought), I would stand and applaud Zelenskii’s courage under fire even if Kevin McCarthy and that Clown in Mar-a-Lago disapprove.

By Ed Dufton