I'm sure it seemed like a cracker jack idea at the time. You know, re-drawing the house districts back in 2010 to make certain huge numbers of them twisted this way and that to ensure rock solid republican majorities. Yes, it was a crafty plan and worked to a tee. In fact it was so fabulously successful last year the republicans retained a majority in the house even though nationwide, democratic candidates running for house seats received more votes than they did.
The good news was all the gerrymandering made sure the old guard was safe from democratic challengers. It appeared being re-elected was a mere formality and those tax payer financed fact finding missions to Fiji with the wife and grandkids would last for decades.
Now the bad news. The party, almost instantly, became infiltrated by a bunch of dangerous loons. Yes, all those skewed boundaries helped keep the good ol' boys around, but it also allowed any straight out of the carton, certifiable fool who thinks Barack Obama was born in Kenya win a seat in congress. Suddenly the hallowed halls began filling up with cruel yahoos who thought Robert's Rules of Order, was something found on a drive through menu in someplace like Tishomingo. Their only idea of what to do, when it came to governing, was vote against whatever the President of the United States wanted, because--well--he's a socialist Muslim and black. As one person told me several years ago, "He's (Obama) just not for us and hates America." She could not provide any evidence of Mr. Obama's hostility toward the nation when I asked her why she thought that way, but hey, details are for the little people.
However, back to the really bad news. GOP policy has, over the last number of years, become not just influenced, but dictated by a bunch of right wing radio and TV wonks. They don't have any idea how congress actually works either and since they haven't the guts, or brains to run for public office, they don't care. All they know is the more insane they sound the better their ratings are. They are the new Joe McCarthys. If you are a republican and don't do what they want, you are forever fucked.
And it gets even worse. They think compromise is some code word for failure. If you compromise you become part of the problem. You are a RINO, a republican in name only, and your wrinkled white ass should be replaced by a true believer.
The entire budget of the United States of America is currently being held in limbo by less than half of the lower house of the legislative branch. It isn't quite the way Jefferson, John Adams, and Tommy Paine had envisioned things working, but it is what it is at the moment. John Boehner, the speaker of house has absolutely no control over the far right wing of his party and he and the rest of the mainstream republicans live in abject fear of them.
That's right pal. No democrat can touch you, but thanks to Rush, Sean, Glenn, and a gaggle of bat shit crazy billionaires there will always be someone willing to run all over your district saying you sold out to a guy whose middle name is Hussein. He will have a brain the size of a ferret's, but he'll be well financed and ruthless. It is either vote with the nuts, or start shopping for a nice assisted living center. At some point someone is going to start calling the tea party strangle hold on things, The Great Terror and he or she won't be far from wrong.
On a fundamental level tea party members hate the government of the United States. They aren't there to manage it, or run it, they are there, quite simply, to destroy it. They are, in every sense of the word, terrorists. When they say defund the Affordable Care Act or we'll make sure the government fails, they are in effect saying, free our brothers from Guantanamo or we'll kill the hostages. Don't let anyone tell you it isn't the same principle, because it is.
Settle in for the long haul. The tea party members of the GOP aren't going to give an inch no matter who the public blames for this disaster. And be assured the rest of the republicans don't have the balls to tell them to screw off and do the right thing.
I'd spit, but none of the bastards are worth even that part of me.
Majority rule, my ass.
sic vita est
10-1-13
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