The Senator from West Virginia deserves, but won’t get, honor and gratitude for stopping Bernie Biden’s $5-Trillion ‘Build Back Better’ monstrosity.
In 1956, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy and his gifted speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, authored a Pulitzer Prize winning biography called Profiles in Courage.
The book celebrated eight United States Senators who exhibited rare political courage by taking principled stands, at great political cost to themselves, to do right by and for the country.
Today, we can, we should, and we must add one more name to Kennedy’s honored and revered list: Senator Joe Manchin.
True, by refusing to succumb to left-wing demands that he rubber-stamp Bernie Biden’s $5-Trillion “Build Back Better” monstrosity, Sen. Manchin is hardly defying the will of his constituents. To the contrary: Biden is deeply unpopular in West Virginia, and polls show that the vast majority of West Virginians oppose his “Build Back Better” monstrosity.
Still, Manchin is a Democrat and the one Senator whose vote can make or break this disastrously transformative legislation. As such, he is under tremendous political pressure to buckle under “for Joe,” “for his president,” and to be a “team player.”
In fact, far left Democratic senators, congressmen, and party activists have already taken to Twitter to impugn Manchin’s integrity and to heap opprobrium on him for daring to dissent from “progressive” party orthodoxy.
In a better world and a politically healthier country, Manchin’s brave and principled stand would be honored and applauded for what it is: a profile in courage. But instead, because Manchin is siding with conservatives and opposing “progressives,” he is (predictably) being demonized and cast as the toad in the road.
The authors of Profiles in Courage knew better and so do we.
Feature photo credit: Then Senator John F. Kennedy (left) and Senator Joe Manchin now (right), courtesy of 1957timecapsule.wordpress.com via the Daily JFK and the Associated Press via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, respectively.
