Lying, Cheating, Double Dealing, Mean Mistreating Republicans
If Americans Want Honest Politicians, We Must Ask God to Give Us the Ability to Discern Between Good and Evil
I recently wrote an article with a similar title about Democrats based on an old song by Patty Loveless.
In it, I provided several examples of lies from Democrats that have angered many Americans. Here are two more:
In June President Joe Biden said, “I will not pardon [Hunter].” There were many instances where he said the same thing. Yet, on December 2, he did exactly what he said he would not do and pardoned his son.
Then there is President Barak Obama’s 2013 lie of the year, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Once Obamacare was in place, many people could no longer purchase the same plan they had previously. In other cases, the same plan was available, but far too expensive to purchase.
Perhaps the most famous lie in modern political history, though, came from a Republican, in the form of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign promise:
“Read my lips. No new taxes.”
Lying not only offends Americans, it is an abomination before God: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
Of course, liars—just like all other sinners—can avoid the lake of fire by confessing and repenting of their sins and calling on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We should all be grateful for this opportunity and seek His forgiveness. Yet, while Christ removes the eternal stench of sin, there are still consequences in this world. In an effort to promote bipartisanship, in this article I will focus on the consequences of lying by Republicans.
Bush’s promise may have won the 1988 election for him, but his lie likely cost him his 1992 bid for reelection against Bill Clinton. In Texas last year, we witnessed a number of members of the Texas House of Representatives lie about what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did in their effort to impeach him. Once the truth was revealed in Paxton’s Texas Senate trial and acquittal, a number of his GOP accusers were voted out of office by unhappy constituents.
Two Examples
These consequences, however, have not stopped some Republicans from continuing to deceive voters. Here are two recent examples from Texas.
First, state Rep. Dustin Burrows and the rest of the Republican House Caucus adopted a rule prior to the Texas Legislature’s 2019 session that GOP caucus members are obligated to vote for the caucus’ nominee for speaker of the Texas House. The reason for this was to stop the ongoing practice of GOP House members getting elected as speaker largely because of support from Democrats. It did not actually work that well in 2019, 2021, and 2023, but at least caucus members voted for the caucus nominee according to the rules.
That might change this year. In December, when it appeared that he was going to lose the caucus vote on the third round of voting, Burrows—in defiance of the caucus rule and in contradiction to his own public statements in support of it—walked out of the caucus meeting with 26 other Republicans, persuaded some Democrats to support him, and declared he had the votes to become speaker (though soon it became apparent he did not). If Burrows and others walk into the House chamber tomorrow and vote for anyone other than the winner of the House GOP caucus vote, Rep. David Cook, they will be guilty of “breach of [their] lawful promise” to support the caucus rule., i.e., breaking the Ninth Commandment.
Second, since 2023 almost every Texas politician involved in the legislative process—statewide and local—have claimed they passed the “Largest Property Tax Cut in Texas History.” When economist Vance Ginn and I testified to the Texas Senate Finance Committee in 2024 that there was, in fact, no tax cut—big or small, we were admonished by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt: “The bottom line is that taxes levied went from $81.888 billion down to $81.452. But you’re saying it is the reverse.”
Bettencourt was citing numbers from the Texas Comptroller provided to the Senate for the hearing. Ginn and I were using the Texas Comptroller’s numbers publicly available on its website. Accepting the Senate version, it still was not the “Largest Property Tax Cut in Texas History,” but at least it was a tax cut. Until it was not.
The comptroller just released its latest Biennial Property Tax Report. In it, the numbers changed. The new data shows that despite claims by Texas politicians that they passed “the largest property tax cut in Texas history—$18 billion,” there was no property tax cut in 2023. In fact, Texas politicians only spent an additional $12.7 billion on public education (not the claimed $18 billion) with the promise Texans would receive the largest property tax cut in Texas history and property tax revenue still went up (see the chart below). Thus, neither the stated amount ($18 billion) nor the promised results (largest tax cut) were true.
Why Do Republican Voters Keep Electing Purveyors of Misinformation?
When I wrote my article about Democrats, my beef was not so much with them as it was with Republicans (see the Burrows’ example above) and Christians (think David French) who want to build alliances with the lying Democrats. Something similar is at work here. While I wish our Republican elected officials would start telling us the truth more often, my beef is really with Republican voters who keep returning the purveyors of misinformation to office.
Though I’ve used Texas as an example, this is a problem in Washington D.C. and in every state. Which leads to the question, “Why do Republicans across the country keep voting for men and women who often do not tell them the truth?”
One clue to this is that the lies tend to go in the same direction. Many Republican politicians claim to be conservative to gain votes in the Republican primary, behave like Democrats when enacting policies, then lie to voters about what they did—the lies rarely go in the other direction. It is likely, then, that some of the more liberal Republican voters don’t mind the means (lies) as long as they get the ends (big government) they like.
Another reason might be a lack of accurate information. Big Media support and regurgitate the lies of Big Government politicians (of both parties) because Big Media like Big Government; such misinformation likely leads some moderate and conservative Republicans to make poor decisions in the voting booth.
The good news on this front is that it looks like things are changing. Elon Musk’s purchase of X is reshaping the media landscape. We saw this in the November elections. The X-factor was even more obvious with the December demise of the pork-laden continuing resolution in D.C. and the ongoing collapse of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom over the child sex abuse scandal.
One thing is clear. If Republicans do not want people who do not tell the truth in office, we need to stop voting for them in Republican primaries. This points to another problem; a lot of Americans who vote Republican in the fall do not vote in the primaries. The fix here is simple; show up in the primaries and vote the swamp dwellers out of office, like Texans did in 2024.
To this end, the Texas state GOP is on the verge of doing something unique about this problem. If Texas Republican politicians do not support the Republican Party’s priorities or follow the GOP caucus rules, they can now be censured by the party and subsequently not able to run in the Republican primary. If politicians tell voters they are Republican but vote like Democrats—that is, if they lie to voters—they may well find themselves out of office.
Discerning Between Good and Evil
In the Garden of Eden, God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil temporarily off limits because Adam and Eve had not yet matured to the point of being able to discern the difference between good and evil. As Uri Brito explains, “This is what it means to rule: to know good and evil and not confuse the two.” As God’s anointed rulers of the earth, it was important for Adam and Eve to wait patiently as they acquired the wisdom before they grasped for the knowledge. Sadly, they failed in this.
It appears today that a large number of elected officials in America—Democrats and Republicans—are also unable to distinguish between good and evil. While that failure is their fault, the fact that they are rulers is the fault of the Americans who elected them. Given that we continue to put these (at best) immature people in positions of authority, as a people Americans have demonstrated that we are not very capable of discerning the difference between good and evil.
Some of the fixes I mention above can help improve this situation, but the only real solution will come through the work of the Holy Spirit and the Christian church as it works to “make disciples of all nations” by preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God’s Word to the American people. America desperately needs another Great Awakening; we should all be praying to the Triune God that in His mercy He would bring one to us.