Despite verbal posturing to the contrary, the GOP has not waged a spirited fight to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood.  And, they’re unlikely to do so in the future.

Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.  And, despite the requisite promises that will come this silly season as GOP candidates argue that Republicans need to regain the White House in order to fulfill promises made in 2010 and in 2014, millions will not believe the unfulfilled promises for a third time.  That dog won’t hunt.

We, who have waited in vain for an assertive GOP to surface, are kin to Vladimir and Estragon, who pined for the arrival of Godot in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot.   

Godot didn’t come, and neither will a genuine GOP initiative to defund Planned Parenthood. 

This leads some conservatives to ask, “Why not?  Haven’t party elites been sufficiently moved to act in response to the horrific harvesting videos released by the Center for Medical Progress?”

The answer is: No. There is not, and never was, a serious GOP intent to strip Planned Parenthood of taxpayer dollars, because party leaders will not invest the political capital necessary to attempt it.  They feel no requirement to match their actions with their rhetoric. 

This fits within the general pattern for the last seven years, wherein Republican promises to resist the Obama regime have proven to be empty rhetorical offerings of red-meat served to conservative loyalists by party leaders in order to keep them on-board, in-tow, and under control.

Today, the consequence of serial broken promises is playing out in the GOP presidential candidates’ campaigns. The establishment aligned candidates are polling in single digits.

Like the shepherd boy who cried “Wolf” too many times, the GOP establishment’s credibility with millions of conservatives is used-up.  The well is dry.

And, it is now at the point in that fable where the old man tells the shepherd boy that, “Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!”  

Meanwhile, more and more, the emerging truth is that there are two parties, but only one ideology.