GOP governance marches on.
House Republicans are in their umpteenth revolt; Boehner's speakership could be in jeopardy; Senate Republicans are behaving like Lincoln's dazed, disoriented duck; a partial government shutdown looms; the conservative sanctity of national security is being trashed for the purity of extremist politics; and McConnell has been rather comically reduced to observing, "I don’t know what’s not to like about" his latest DHS funding plan that is shattering his party.
One is tempted to say such Republican "governance" is akin to that of a banana republic, but that would be an insult to those who are merely bananas. These guys, to be sure, are paid-up passengers on the GOP clown barge, but it's their pathological, anti-Obama malice that drives them. All their deliberations (to be charitable) are fiercely reductive: How can we screw the president? That's the test of each bill, and always the full measure of these bomb-throwers.
It looks as though the GOP's permanent anarchy will again be subsumed by a temporary fix, in the form of — what else? — another continuing resolution. "House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions said he did not support approving McConnell’s plan. Instead, Sessions said, Congress should pass a temporary extension of funding for up to six weeks and convene a House-Senate conference to try to hammer out the differences between the two chambers."
This is, of course, merely a Walkeresque punt. At the risk of being stupendously tautological: The governing party is in its state of anarchy because it can't possibly govern. Governing requires compromise, and compromise is antithetical to any political faction driven solely by malice. Hurling that faction into a conference den with a majority leader who absently ponders "I don't know what's not to like" about reasonableness is but lighting another fuse, and chaotically detonating another bomb.
Even the incompetent commies had their Five-Year plans. The GOP? Governance and national security via six-week CRs. That's what the world's beacon of democracy has come to. And anyone who was paying attention foresaw it, well before last November.
Perhaps POTUS should veto the CR, if it ever reaches his desk.
Posted by: shsavage | February 25, 2015 at 08:41 AM
Wouldn't that be a giggle?
Posted by: Peter G | February 25, 2015 at 09:56 AM
Well this is what happens after thirty five years of hearing that government is the problem. Eventually it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. These people have had such hatred of this president for the last six years, their attacks have started to ring hollow and the only people being harmed anymore are the attackers themselves. What are they going to do when they no longer have Obama to kick around anymore? Say what you want about Hillary, she's had almost a quarter of a century now of dealing with right wing attacks which I personally always felt were more directed at her than her husband. 2016 attacks on her will be amateur hour at best, so who would that leave for them?
Posted by: Anne J | February 25, 2015 at 10:04 AM