Van Hollen & Cardin Lie About Being Bipartisan

Maryland’s Democrat incumbents this election cycle are dishonestly trying to portray themselves as magnanimous statesmen, willing to listen to every opposing view and craft meaningful compromises for the good of the American people. It’s complete horse hockey. Maryland’s Democrat representatives in the House and Senate right now are among the most partisan politicians in the country.

Representative Chris Van Hollen on Monday tried to pin his challenger Ken Timmerman to the wall with a silly question invoking the spirit of Maryland’s late Republican Senator Charles “Mac” Matthias. Van Hollen’s goal was two-fold. First, since the debate was being held in Frederick County–parts of which were recently gerrymandered into Van Hollen’s district–he was pandering to new constituents by raising up a famous son of Frederick County. Second, he wanted to portray Timmerman as inflexible because he has principles upon which he won’t compromise. I might chalk that a up as fair game if Van Hollen wasn’t such a dishonest actor on the issue. Van Hollen is one of the most partisan Democrats in the House.

According to OpenCongress.com, he votes with his party 96% of the time–hardly a paragon of bipartisan virtue.

Van Hollen breaks with his party only a fraction of one percent more often than Nancy Pelosi! When he talks about compromise, he’s simply lying. There’s no other word for it. He’s much like his cohort in the U.S. Senate, Ben Cardin.

At a candidate forum last week and on WOLB Radio this morning, Marylanders were subject to more of this nonsense from 45 year career politician Ben Cardin. Cardin makes the same claim about being a big compromiser working across the aisle with Republicans.  It’s total crap.  Cardin’s voting record is exactly  the same as Van Hollen’s.

It seems pretty clear what’s going on here. The Democrat party has focus-grouped the language about working across party lines and found it’s effective in swaying voters. But the fact remains that all it is is language. The actions of these men do not back up their words.  (Cardin for example trumpets his commitment  to “equal pay” while paying his female staffers 30% less than his male ones.)

Democrats in Maryland (and around the country) bank on voters not doing their homework. Remember, these are men who didn’t utter a peep of protest when locks were changed on conference room doors to keep Republicans out of the health care debate. I fully expect that they will not even break with their party to be critical of President Obama for complete botching of the security situation in Benghazi. Even when people die as a result of their President’s failed policies they are Democrats first, Americans second. These are partisan ideologues in every sense. That in itself doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that they won’t publicly own their ideology. Instead they bamboozle voters with dishonest rhetoric.

Don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do. What they do is spend your money making more and more people dependent on the government for their survival. Van Hollen and Cardin will continue to regurgitate their party’s talking point about a “balanced approach” to addressing our nation’s $16,000,000,000,000 debt–perpetuating the fraud that our debt exists because taxes are too low. We are buried in debt because these men spend too much of our money. Van Hollen served on the bogus “super committee” tasked with cutting spending and determined that cutting anything but defense was just too “reckless.” (Keep in mind that in Washington a “cut” means a reduction in the rate of increase, not an actual reduction in spending.)

In my opinion, refusing to compromise with these hacks is a virtue. The trick is getting that message across to voters.