As our staff members have continued to read the horror stories about the debt ceiling and the disasters of the ongoing shutdown, we keep finding ourselves repeatedly & unpleasantly surprised. Several topics kept resurfacing in our discussions, including how such a sizable number of Republicans in Congress remain so clueless about the negative effects their obstruction is causing.
When mixed with the season, the term 'nightmare' also kept coming back up in our discussions, along with inevitable comparison to monsters in the closet, and even the old purple-horned snorkelwhacker from the comic strip 'Bloom County.'
For all the whip counting and posturing going on in DC right now, what's really driving the entire process on Capitol Hill isn't anything complex, though. It's simply the outsized fear by Republican Congressmembers of being attacked by the tea party wing of the GOP - specifically, about getting a primary challenge from a privately funded extremist tea party candidate.
Think of it as your local cowardly Republican Congressmember's personal anxiety closet.
What any brave adult knows is that the key to defeating any nightmare is to stand up and face it, as both President Obama and Congressional Democrats are calling for their Republican counterparts in Congress to do right now.
Frankly, after looking at the polls Monday, or at the drop in the Dow & S&P since the shutdown began, you might think Congressional Republicans have far more to fear from their constituents than they do from the deep pockets of wealthy right-wingers like the Koch family, or Art Pope in North Carolina. Indeed, some Tea Party Republican congressmembers are already catching political backlash from their constituents at home for being too extreme.
The problem for the GOP really boils down to something far more simple than what most pundits have made it out to be.
If a Republican member of Congress ends up cowering under the covers every time a Tea Party bogieman with a wad of cash jumps up and down, then the question isn't whether or not they're going to get chased out someday by the Tea Party monsters. It's only a matter of when that will happen.
Further, it's not like those Tea Partiers are truly their own masters. If you don't think that Sen. Ted Cruz will change his tune when his financial masters yank his money chain, then you haven't noticed the silence coming from politicians like Sen. Marco Rubio over the past few months.
If Republican pragmatists truly want to stop their nightmares, they need to stand up both for the people who they nominally represent - their constituents - as well as for themselves.
Like we said, the key to defeating any nightmare is to look it square in the face and stand up to it.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
The Scariest Halloween Tale Yet
While kids from all over America are already choosing, buying, and assembling their Halloween costumes, many adults are also getting ready for the season by building haunted houses and polishing up their best scary stories.
While we've always been partial to the tale of the headless horseman, the scariest story we can think of right now is the story of the headless, spineless Republican Party, and the horse they rode in on.
Elections used to have consequences, and everyone involved understood - if you lose the election, you don't get to push your agenda through Congress. Your side guts its political teams, you push away or minimize your more troublesome donors, and quietly but vigorously spend the next few years finding better candidates, so that you can retake Congress - and then you can push your agenda.
Instead, according to a report released over the weekend in the New York Times, the GOP - led by its extreme right wing - spent the months after their brutal 2012 loss by planning both the federal shutdown crisis and the looming debt ceiling crisis in a insane attempt to get by blackmail what they couldn't get at the polls.
That's right, Republicans. This shutdown? You built that. Further, if Republicans in Congress use this shutdown and the even more scary debt ceiling to cut off the head of the American economy? The GOP will own that disaster as well.
That doesn't mean Democratic, Independent, and even politically unaffiliated Americans don't share some of the blame for putting us through this economic horror story. As Jonathan Chait noted over the weekend, the unexploded ordnance of the debt ceiling is a weapon Americans have left lying around in the machinery of our government for a some time - but it's a weapon only "the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic" would use.
As both Bill Moyers and Colbert King noted, the neo-Confederates that truly are the core of extremist Tea Party certainly fit that bill as societal sociopaths. As Sara Robinson pointed out earlier this year, while the Confederacy technically lost the American Civil War, the culture of the arrogant, belligerent, anti-Democratic old South has never truly fit in with the culture of America at large. Now that they see whatever sliver of their world they thought still existed slipping away, many of those right-wing extremists are willing to do anything, and fight any battle, in order to keep their delusion alive.
The Civil War metaphors aren't just bouncing around in academia and the media. Indeed, as one Republican member of the House revealed to Byron York recently, the more sane members of the House GOP leadership are looking at the shutdown and debt ceiling fight like a Civil War battle they wandered into by accident.
The fact is, the GOP leadership in Congress didn't wander into this fight accidentally. Republicans - whether they're Tea Party extremists or not - planned for this disaster. Many of them even gleefully campaigned on the idea of shutting the government down in 2010.
Now, those same weak GOP leaders who supported sociopathic extremists like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are now allowing them to wildly swing around the economic weapons of both the shutdown and debt limit. The combination of both could potentially deliver a fatal blow to the American economy, and the world's economy in the process, setting the entire world back 200 years, economically, overnight.
If that's not a modern horror story to curl your toes, we're not sure what might do it.
While we've always been partial to the tale of the headless horseman, the scariest story we can think of right now is the story of the headless, spineless Republican Party, and the horse they rode in on.
Elections used to have consequences, and everyone involved understood - if you lose the election, you don't get to push your agenda through Congress. Your side guts its political teams, you push away or minimize your more troublesome donors, and quietly but vigorously spend the next few years finding better candidates, so that you can retake Congress - and then you can push your agenda.
Instead, according to a report released over the weekend in the New York Times, the GOP - led by its extreme right wing - spent the months after their brutal 2012 loss by planning both the federal shutdown crisis and the looming debt ceiling crisis in a insane attempt to get by blackmail what they couldn't get at the polls.
That's right, Republicans. This shutdown? You built that. Further, if Republicans in Congress use this shutdown and the even more scary debt ceiling to cut off the head of the American economy? The GOP will own that disaster as well.
That doesn't mean Democratic, Independent, and even politically unaffiliated Americans don't share some of the blame for putting us through this economic horror story. As Jonathan Chait noted over the weekend, the unexploded ordnance of the debt ceiling is a weapon Americans have left lying around in the machinery of our government for a some time - but it's a weapon only "the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic" would use.
As both Bill Moyers and Colbert King noted, the neo-Confederates that truly are the core of extremist Tea Party certainly fit that bill as societal sociopaths. As Sara Robinson pointed out earlier this year, while the Confederacy technically lost the American Civil War, the culture of the arrogant, belligerent, anti-Democratic old South has never truly fit in with the culture of America at large. Now that they see whatever sliver of their world they thought still existed slipping away, many of those right-wing extremists are willing to do anything, and fight any battle, in order to keep their delusion alive.
The Civil War metaphors aren't just bouncing around in academia and the media. Indeed, as one Republican member of the House revealed to Byron York recently, the more sane members of the House GOP leadership are looking at the shutdown and debt ceiling fight like a Civil War battle they wandered into by accident.
The fact is, the GOP leadership in Congress didn't wander into this fight accidentally. Republicans - whether they're Tea Party extremists or not - planned for this disaster. Many of them even gleefully campaigned on the idea of shutting the government down in 2010.
Now, those same weak GOP leaders who supported sociopathic extremists like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are now allowing them to wildly swing around the economic weapons of both the shutdown and debt limit. The combination of both could potentially deliver a fatal blow to the American economy, and the world's economy in the process, setting the entire world back 200 years, economically, overnight.
If that's not a modern horror story to curl your toes, we're not sure what might do it.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Truly Essential
As we roll to the end of the first week of experiencing the 2013 Federal Government shutdown - courtesy of the arrogance and ignorance of a few clueless extremist Republicans in Congress - we thought it would be a good time to reexamine what "essential" really means.
We know that yesterday, Capitol Hill police and members of the Secret Service were absolutely essential.
On Thursday, 34-year old dental hygienist Miriam Carey attempted to use her car as a weapon, in Washington, DC. She crashed both the White House and the grounds outside the Capitol, in an escape attempt that ended in her death. Ms. Carey had her one year old daughter in the car with her - and at the time we're writing this, no reason is known for her actions.
Many of the brave members of the Capitol Hill police and the other security forces who sprang into action Thursday all had one thing in common - they're not considered "essential" personnel under the shutdown. Many of the men and women who instantly jumped into action were essentially doing their jobs for free, since no one knows when they'll actually get paid.
While those men and women were rushing towards chaos, not knowing what they were facing, people like Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were talking about "winning" the government shutdown in front of TV cameras they thought were off. Congressman Darrell Issa was barreling around Capitol Hill at that point, pushing some of those same security people about. All three of these members of Congress were happily picking up their paychecks, since according to the rules, they're all "essential."
Frankly, we think those in Congress need to get a dictionary and look up what the word "essential" really means. While they're there, Republicans especially might want to learn the definition of what "compromise" is, too.
There are a great many things our staff members consider "essential." Our families, friends, and pets top those lists, along with fresh food and clean water. Safe places to live and work are also essential - though for Americans along the Gulf Coast today, that safety could be seriously threatened. Americans across the nation at the beginning of this year's flu season are also in danger, though we doubt workers at the CDC will get called back to work, like some of the workers at FEMA.
Whenever a crisis occurs, most people think about those they care about most. We've never encountered anyone who can't tell us why they'd do almost anything for those people they consider essential.
Yet, as the America some members of Congress claim to love continues hurtling headlong towards this completely preventable, man-made debt ceiling crisis, many Republicans seem to have no real idea why they've shut down the government. Speaker Boenher and the Republican "leadership" in Congress also don't seem to truly grasp the seriousness of what defaulting on our nation's debt would mean.
What we do know is that while those clueless members of Congress are still getting paid, some of those Capitol Hill police and other security officers - people who were willing to potentially lay their lives on the line to protect people we consider essential - won't be getting a paycheck today.
Maybe "essential" just has a different meaning to those of us who have less to lose in life.
We know that yesterday, Capitol Hill police and members of the Secret Service were absolutely essential.
On Thursday, 34-year old dental hygienist Miriam Carey attempted to use her car as a weapon, in Washington, DC. She crashed both the White House and the grounds outside the Capitol, in an escape attempt that ended in her death. Ms. Carey had her one year old daughter in the car with her - and at the time we're writing this, no reason is known for her actions.
Many of the brave members of the Capitol Hill police and the other security forces who sprang into action Thursday all had one thing in common - they're not considered "essential" personnel under the shutdown. Many of the men and women who instantly jumped into action were essentially doing their jobs for free, since no one knows when they'll actually get paid.
While those men and women were rushing towards chaos, not knowing what they were facing, people like Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were talking about "winning" the government shutdown in front of TV cameras they thought were off. Congressman Darrell Issa was barreling around Capitol Hill at that point, pushing some of those same security people about. All three of these members of Congress were happily picking up their paychecks, since according to the rules, they're all "essential."
Frankly, we think those in Congress need to get a dictionary and look up what the word "essential" really means. While they're there, Republicans especially might want to learn the definition of what "compromise" is, too.
There are a great many things our staff members consider "essential." Our families, friends, and pets top those lists, along with fresh food and clean water. Safe places to live and work are also essential - though for Americans along the Gulf Coast today, that safety could be seriously threatened. Americans across the nation at the beginning of this year's flu season are also in danger, though we doubt workers at the CDC will get called back to work, like some of the workers at FEMA.
Whenever a crisis occurs, most people think about those they care about most. We've never encountered anyone who can't tell us why they'd do almost anything for those people they consider essential.
Yet, as the America some members of Congress claim to love continues hurtling headlong towards this completely preventable, man-made debt ceiling crisis, many Republicans seem to have no real idea why they've shut down the government. Speaker Boenher and the Republican "leadership" in Congress also don't seem to truly grasp the seriousness of what defaulting on our nation's debt would mean.
What we do know is that while those clueless members of Congress are still getting paid, some of those Capitol Hill police and other security officers - people who were willing to potentially lay their lives on the line to protect people we consider essential - won't be getting a paycheck today.
Maybe "essential" just has a different meaning to those of us who have less to lose in life.
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