One of the most effective ways of discouraging people is to make them think there’s absolutely nothing they can do about something, anyway. Thus, liberals have tried to insinuate that Obamacare is impossible to remove, hoping conservatives will despair.

But with only one-half of one branch of government, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and the House Republicans have made it absolutely clear that Republicans are not giving up on repealing Obamacare. Inasmuch as “bubonic plague” is polling higher than “Obamacare,” I’d say this is a brilliant marketing strategy for the GOP.

Unlike every other idiotic government program ever foisted on us by the Democrats, this time Republicans are not rolling over on this illegitimately passed, disastrous legislation. Give Republicans a veto-proof majority in the Senate, America, and they will rid us of this plague. (Without even charging a co-pay!)

Not only that, but Republicans have exposed Democrats as hypocrites who are forcing the rest of the country to live under Obamacare, while shutting down the government rather than live under it themselves.

With any luck, the Obama-Reid government shutdown — as Sean Hannity calls it — has also impressed upon Republicans the importance of winning elections.

Whatever cavils and objections liberals have to the Republicans’ majority in the House, the Democrats’ Senate majority certainly does not reflect the popular will. At least nine sitting Democratic senators have asterisks by their names, indicating seats given away by Republicans through unforced errors.

The only thing the Democrats’ majority demonstrates is the stunning incompetence, stupidity and malfeasance of the Republican Party.

Here are a few Senate seats recently sacrificed by Republicans.

In 2008, career prosecutors in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice convicted Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska for various corruption offenses just weeks before the election. The prosecution was so sleazy that not only was the conviction thrown out, but the indictment was tossed — by Obama’s Justice Department, no less.

Too late! Stevens had already lost his re-election. The winning Democrat will now hold that seat in perpetuity.

If that were ever done to a Democrat, the prosecutors’ names would be known by every American, objects of obloquy worse than “Halliburton.” But there’s no cost to throwing a Republican senator’s election.

That’s one Senate seat.

Also in 2008, Democrats openly stole a Senate election for Al Franken in Minnesota right under the nose of Republican governor Tim “Blood and Guts” Pawlenty. You don’t have to be like the Democrats and steal elections, Republicans, but can you at least stop letting them be stolen?

That’s two Senate seats.

Then there are the races where Republicans were screwed by campaign consultants more interested in being able to buy another vacation home than winning elections — as described in my new book, Never Trust a Liberal Over Three-Especially a Republican.

Republican campaign consultants ran Linda McMahon for the Senate from Connecticut in 2010, and then — to pay off the mortgage — again in 2012.

McMahon is an American patriot who spent a lot of her own money to beat a Democrat. Unfortunately, she never had a chance to win a statewide election in Connecticut, as anyone with half a brain knew. (See my multiple columns screaming this fact from the rooftops before she won the nominations with the help of her high-priced consultants.)

Former congressman Rob Simmons could have won either of those Senate races in Connecticut. He had been elected to the House from a swing district in 2000, beating an incumbent Democrat, then held his seat for six years, losing in 2006 by about three votes. He’s a Haverford College graduate, was an Army colonel who served in Vietnam, worked at the CIA and taught at Yale. That’s a candidate Connecticut soccer moms would love.

But if Simmons had won the nomination, how would Republican campaign consultants be able to retire early? They wanted a money-bags candidate, not a winner.

Running McMahon in Connecticut was not a mistake — it was a betrayal of the Republican Party by political consultants who wanted to line their bank accounts instead of backing a winner.

Republican political consultants did the exact same thing with another great patriot, John Raese, in West Virginia. West Virginians heard Raese had homes in Palm Beach and Telluride and didn’t believe he was one of them. Political consultants heard he had homes in Palm Beach and Telluride and started shopping for Jaguars.

Poor Raese has spent a lot of his own money to lose four statewide elections in conservative West Virginia, including the 2010 and 2012 U.S. Senate elections.

Those races alone amount to at least three and maybe four more Senate seats Republicans should have picked up from Connecticut and West Virginia, but lost for no good reason.

That’s five Senate seats.

I haven’t even gotten to the tea party candidates, and we would already have a U.S. Senate that’s 51-47 Republican, absent Republican traitors, morons and hacks.

No one gets rich by hurting the Democratic Party. But a lot of people get rich off losing races for the Republican Party.

The Republicans’ recent brave fight against Obamacare should make conservatives proud. But you know what would have made it even better? If Republicans had had a majority in the Senate.

In 2014, how about Republicans concentrate on flipping Democratic seats to the GOP in conservative Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Montana and Alaska, instead of wasting money and energy purging impure Republicans in safe seats? Can’t we wait until we have a nice big majority to start purging our own incumbents?

Other than Sen. Lindsey Graham — you can purge him. As a character in Voltaire’s “Candide” said, “It is good to hang an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others.”

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