When incorrigible Chuck Schumer threatens to blame Republicans for a government shutdown, pajama-boy RINOs begin searching their desk drawers for tranquilizers.  After all, if the government were to shut down, Democrats wouldn’t be able to prosecute their political enemies, give aid and comfort to illegal immigrants, and continue bankrupting the country.

This movie has been replayed so many times that most people just ignore it.  The truth is that not only would a government shutdown not be a problem, it would actually be a good thing for the country.  There have been 20 shutdowns over the past 50 years, and during those shutdowns only “non-essential” employees were put on unpaid furlough.  Which raises the question, why does the government employ people whose services are non-essential in the first place?  If their services are non-essential, why not just fire them permanently?

Right now, a handful of Freedom Caucus folks are trying to prevent Republicans from doing what they do best — cave to Democrat demands to avoid a dreaded shutdown — but if the past is prologue to the future, Republicans will likely back down on most issues.  You’d think they would know by now that trying to appease Democrats doesn’t work.  In fact, it makes things worse, because appeasement wreaks of weakness.  The only thing that will work is for Republicans to go on offense and use the Dems’ own tactics against them.

Now is the time to demand not only spending cuts and a Joe Biden impeachment inquiry, but a long list of other things.  Matt Gaetz gave a good starting list of items that need to be addressed before agreeing to any kind of government funding, things Kevin McCarthy promised clear back in January but now seems to have forgotten.

These include impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas, cutting off funding for the DHS, holding votes on term limits and a balanced budget, and, above all, subpoenaing Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, and other members of the Biden crime family who have received money from Joe Biden’s multiyear racketeering operation.

I would go one step further and insist that Republicans start prosecuting the prosecutors, starting with Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and the rest of the sham January 6 Committee, all of whom, at a minimum, are guilty of conspiracy and abuse of power.  The reason Democrat AGs have had the audacity to openly conspire to prevent Donald Trump from being eligible to run for president again is because history has taught them there will be no consequences for their illegal actions.

That said, there appears to be unanimity among conservative pundits that GOP presidential candidates should focus on the economy in their quest to win their party’s nomination.  That argument, however, falls flat for me.  If politicians were serious about “fixing” the economy, it would take very little of their time, because the economy is self-correcting.  All government needs to do is get rid of most regulations, dramatically lower taxes, and — most important of all — get out of the way!

That being the case, even though the economy is important to everyday Americans, I believe it’s just as important, probably more so, for every candidate to explain to voters exactly what he intends to do about the weaponization of government that is turning the country into a police state.  News flash:  Once you have an authoritarian government in place, there is no fixing the economy, because economic issues, like all other issues, are arbitrarily decided by those in power.

Finally, those who fret that investigating Joe Biden’s criminal activities will make him a sympathetic figure like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are way off base, because Biden is an entirely different animal.  Contrary to the propaganda Democrats have been peddling for years about “good old Joe from Scranton,” the truth is that he’s always been a nasty, self-indulgent liar who is incapable of showing an ounce of compassion toward anyone.

Today, most Americans — including Democrats who pretend otherwise — realize that for years Joe Biden has been selling out his own country for tens of millions of dollars.  Sorry, but he is not a sympathetic figure, and he should not be allowed to slip into the night and live out the remainder of his life in luxury in his Delaware mansion.  Impeachment is nice and all that, but Joe Biden needs to be criminally prosecuted.

What it’s all boiling down to is Kevin McCarthy and the rich men north of Richmond versus Matt Gaetz & Co.  Everything is at stake here, because if the latter doesn’t win out, I’m not sure Republicans will ever have another opportunity quite like today to slay the Uniparty dragon and begin the long, hard task of draining the swamp.  The time to go for the jugular is now.