This week, the NFL Draft descends on Pittsburgh. For many fans, Draft Day is the most hopeful day of the year — a chance to believe one rookie or well-timed trade will finally deliver the championship that always seems just out of reach. It’s also a time for the age-old debate between building your offense or your defense.

Political parties face the same pressure. Hall of Fame coach Bear Bryant put it bluntly: “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.” But Republican leaders have too often misinterpreted that maxim and taken it to its extreme, seeking to minimize risk at the expense of boldly pursuing wins.

If the GOP wants to be remembered for something more than last year’s highlight reel, the party should deliver more wins through budget reconciliation by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

For example, imagine your favorite team coming out after kickoff and immediately dropping into a prevent defense. You’d be furious. That scheme is for closing out a lead when time is on your side, not for playing an entire game. Deployed prematurely, it surrenders easy, incremental yards and hands the opponent the initiative.

This is why Republicans must get off their back foot and go on offense. In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, let’s call back to our founding fathers for a different strategy from our first president, George Washington: “Offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only … means of defense.” Or as the legendary boxer Jack Dempsey distilled this principle: “The best defense is a good offense.”

So how could the GOP go on offense and force Democrats to play defense for a change? House Republicans have a golden opportunity right in front of them right now.

RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation

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This week, the Senate took the first step to unlock the federal budget process called reconciliation, which allows for Congress to make changes to spending for that fiscal year without the threat of a Democrat filibuster. The Senate-passed budget resolution contains reconciliation instructions for only two committees to produce text for the final bill, focusing on funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol — a direct response to end the DHS shutdown caused by Democrats’ outrageous refusal to fund those parts of the Department of Homeland Security. While Republicans need to fund the DHS, reconciliation is a time-intensive and arduous process. Given the time crunch and the need to deliver more legislative wins, congressional Republicans can and should use the reconciliation process to do more and go on offense.

Specifically, House Republicans could go big by including policies that reform wasteful spending and eliminate fraud, delivering impressive wins for everyday Americans that reduce the cost of living.

The effort required to enact this plan might make some in D.C. bristle. It would take long nights and likely some weekends, but the American people would finally see and feel the tangible effects of federal policy on kitchen-table issues, just like how people filing their taxes this year got a boost from the Working Families Tax Cut signed into law last year, using the same reconciliation process.

Voters expect more than business as usual from their elected representatives. No one wants to see their team down the field just to kick a field goal without even attempting a touchdown. That approach denies the American people the opportunity to see the full potential of policies that could be enacted if the GOP went on offense.

Enough fans will suffer through another disappointing season, remaining loyal to their losing teams. Americans are hungry for a win. If the GOP wants to be remembered for something more than last year’s highlight reel, the party should deliver more wins through budget reconciliation by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

​Championship, Department of homeland security, Immigration and customs enforcement, Nfl draft, Political parties, Senate, Opinion & analysis 

The Israeli government announced on Monday that this June, “the Dead Sea becomes Pride Land, the biggest LGBTQ+ festival ever in the Middle East,” adding that “Pride rises at the lowest place on earth.”

This celebration of degeneracy and non-straight lifestyle choices — set to take place near what is believed to be the site of Sodom, the city razed by God because of its brazen sexual corruption — will run 24 hours a day from June 1 to June 4.

‘You won’t see this anywhere else in the region.’

According the Jerusalem Post, the non-straight festival will raise a city in the desert featuring parties, a central performance arena, art complexes, “relaxation” areas, and “family-friendly areas with children’s activities.”

“This is not just another festival; it’s the biggest thing we’ve done here,” Aaron Cohen, the main producer behind “Pride Land,” told the Post. “It’s an experience that lives 24/7, from quiet visits to nights of Pride, with a living envelope of music and people.”

The promotion of the event by the Israeli government — just one day after the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that one of its soldiers smashed a statue of the crucified Christ outside a church with a sledgehammer — prompted significant backlash among some conservative Christians.

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American theologian and pastor Dale Partridge tweeted, “The devil couldn’t have written it better. ‘The lowest place on earth’ ‘The Dead Sea becomes pride land.'”

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre raised the matter of whether his tax dollars might be subsidizing the event, then asked, “Can anyone very carefully explain to me why American Christians owe anything to this?”

Conservative commentator Michael Knowles insinuated that the Israeli government’s announcement answered the question recently posed by the New York Times about the cause of the recent increase in meteor sightings overhead.

Knowles’ colleague, Matt Walsh, called the planned festival “absolutely evil and disgusting.”

Tomasz Froelich, an Alternative for Germany politician who serves in the European Parliament, noted that “the Patriarch of Jerusalem was denied access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday for security reasons, but there is comfort: The Pride can take place without a care!”

The eponymous host of BlazeTV’s “The John Doyle Show” wrote, “God could do the funniest thing ever.”

On Friday, the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., plugged the event, stating, “You won’t see this anywhere else in the region.”

While the Israeli government appears keen to get the word out about the Sodom-adjacent LGBT festival, the U.S. State Department has recommended that Americans reconsider travel to the country due to terrorism and civil unrest and instructed travelers to avoid crowds.

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​Israel, Lgbt, Nonstraight, Degeneracy, Sodom, Gomorrah, Leftism, Sexuality, Deviancy, Middle east, Biblical, Christian, Religion, Morality, Christianity, Dead sea, Pride land, Politics 

Many years ago, a man approached me after church.

“I heard about you and your wife’s journey,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re going through. I know how you feel.”

What happened to the people in pain? Did their burdens lift? Did their circumstances change?

I remember being surprised. I didn’t know anyone in that city who walked a road like ours. By that point, both of my wife’s legs were gone, and we were somewhere around surgery number 75.

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied earnestly. “My wife broke her ankle last month.”

Of the many gifts our heavenly Father has bestowed, sarcasm didn’t make the cut, so I bit my tongue and learned to like the taste of blood. After a brief but violent collision between my brain and my mouth, I responded the way any good Southerner would.

“Bless your heart.”

Yet his words stayed with me. That word “exactly” was doing a lot of work. He didn’t ask to understand. He announced that he already did.

A broken ankle is certainly nothing to be minimized, but it is not the same as a life marked by decades of surgeries and a body that no longer has ankles. And treating those two things as the same doesn’t honor suffering. It distorts it.

RELATED: You don’t have to engage with crazy

Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images

We do this more than we realize. Not just in church hallways, but on far larger stages.

One of the most famous moments was during the 1990s when Bill Clinton leaned in to a camera during a presidential town hall debate, softened his voice, and told a distressed audience member, “I feel your pain.”

Or, as he said it, “Ah feel your pain.”

It worked. He connected with enough people to win. But it raises questions.

What happened to the people in pain? Did their burdens lift? Did their circumstances change?

When suffering is approached with certainty rather than humility, it becomes toxic empathy. It sounds like compassion, but it satisfies the speaker and leaves the sufferer untouched. It doesn’t just fail to help; it often abandons people in the very moment they asked not to be.

Understanding is claimed. Burden is often avoided.

When someone shares their pain, he’s not asking you to take over. He’s inviting you in — but not to rearrange the furniture.

Too often, we grasp for words that sound right instead of doing what is right. Words are how we connect, but in moments like these, too many of them get in the way.

I never know exactly how someone else feels. But I can listen. I can pay attention. I can show up. And I can resist the urge to insert myself into something I haven’t carried. I learned that from my wife, Gracie.

A woman once started to share something painful with Gracie, then stopped and said, “My situation doesn’t compare to yours.”

Gracie didn’t let that stand.

“Don’t minimize your pain by comparing it to mine,” she said. “If you’re going to compare anything, compare this: If I’ve found God to be faithful in my journey, then hold on to that while you trust Him in yours.”

Somewhere along the way, that woman probably learned to measure her pain before she spoke of it. To decide whether it qualified. Gracie didn’t accept that. She let her know she deserved to be seen.

We tend to mishandle each other’s and our own pain. Sometimes we insert ourselves into someone else’s pain. Sometimes we talk ourselves out of our own. And in both cases, something essential gets lost.

Suffering doesn’t need a spokesperson. It needs someone willing to see and stay.

Years ago, Gracie and I waited in line to meet President George W. Bush. When our turn came, he reached out to greet me, then turned to her. He noticed her uncovered prosthetic legs below her skirt. This was long before people displayed them the way they do now, especially women.

He didn’t say anything. He met her eyes, took her hand, and held it in both of his. I watched his expression change. His eyes softened. There was a hint of moisture there. And he just stayed with her for a moment that seemed to stretch.

The most powerful man on the planet at the time didn’t insert himself into her story. He didn’t try to prove he understood it. He simply met her in it.

We see the opposite often enough. Public figures stand under bright lights and assure people that they understand. They speak quickly, confidently, sometimes even spiritually, about pain they have never carried. It sounds compassionate. It polls well and is usually offered in exchange for votes or money.

But it leaves people alone. Because the moment someone claims to fully understand another person’s pain, he has stopped listening. And when suffering becomes a platform, the work of carrying it gets left to someone else.

Respecting someone’s pain doesn’t involve saying, “I know exactly how you feel.” It starts with admitting you don’t and staying anyway.

​Opinion & analysis