Thanks, Sen. Ossoff
Every American who has been recently delayed at an airport should thank Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and his fellow Democrats.
Every American who has been recently delayed at an airport should thank Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and his fellow Democrats. You lost hours of your time because they blocked funding for the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard.
I mention Sen. Ossoff specifically because he represents the state that is home to the busiest airport in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. It is also home to Delta Airlines, one of the largest, most profitable airlines in the world.
You would think Sen. Ossoff would be focused on keeping both going and maximizing their chance for growth and profit. It should be a top priority for a legislator who represents them. It certainly was for me when I represented both in Georgia’s 6th District. After all, Delta is the largest private employer in Georgia with 43,500 Georgians on its payroll. More than 20,000 additional Georgians work at Hartsfield. It is estimated the airport generates $35 billion annually in economic impact for Georgia.
Given these human and economic realities, you would think that a freshman senator up for re-election would be pounding the desk and demanding that TSA get all the resources it needs.
However, Sen. Ossoff can’t focus on the needs of the citizens of Georgia. He must focus first on the key agenda of the left, followed by the requirements of pure Democratic Party unity. As long as Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer is willing to hold the country hostage to try to force President Donald J. Trump to cave on Immigration and Customs Enforcement reforms, then Ossoff is committed to being one of the hostage takers.
The Democrats’ play could be a great opportunity for Republicans if they could get their communications act together. One of the things which most frustrates me — as someone who has been actively involved in politics and self-government since 1958 — is the absolute inability of the GOP develop an aggressive, purposeful communications system.
The Democrats’ “hold Americans hostage” campaign is just begging for a large methodical response. It is a perfect example of how cynical and calculating the Democratic caucus is. I learned about the caucus’s cynicism firsthand from former Sen. Zell Miller in 2003. I had known Zell since he was a state senator in 1964. He invited me over for breakfast and told me he owed me an apology. He said back when he was Georgia’s governor in Atlanta, he thought my attacks on the Senate Democrats as cynical leftists back then were too strong. But after he became a part of the Senate Democratic caucus, he said he realized I hadn’t gone hard enough. The straw that broke his willingness to go along with the party was the Democrats’ big fight to block the creation of TSA unless it could be unionized (which President George W Bush adamantly opposed).
As soon as the election was over, the Democrats caved and agreed to a nonunionized TSA. Zell thought blocking a national security issue for electoral theatre was wrong. It was a clear example of the Senate Democrats’ power-oriented cynicism. This is part of what caused him to endorse President Bush in 2004 despite spending a lifetime as a Georgia Democrat.
The Ossoff-Senate Democrat hostage strategy is an opening for three direct actions by the Republicans.
First, every Republican should say — every chance they get and as part of every answer to the news media — that Americans waiting in line should use the time to call their Democratic senators and house members, post comments online, and call into talk radio stations.
Second, the GOP should put up ads in every state with a Democratic senator up for re-election that focus on their responsibility for the pain they are causing traveling Americans and those who work in the airline industry. The Democratic hostage taking strategy is causing a lot of pain and we should make sure that every American connects that pain back to the Democrats.
Third, we should get iconic pictures of the lines at the worst airports (in some cases they extend out of the terminal with lines in the street) and turn them into billboards that simply say “Thank the Democratic Senators.” Everyone should know that the Democrats are willing to make Americans’ lives worse to get their way.
Republicans must be as aggressively and competently willing to tell the truth as the Democrats are to lie. The TSA fight is a good place to practice this principle.
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Great ideas on the billboards! And put them around Hartsfield. Where do I send a check?