I’ll give Dana Milbank partial credit for taking John Boehner to task over his intention to revive the crisis over the debt ceiling and create another avoidable fiasco that needlessly harms the economy. I don’t understand, however, why Milbank can’t see what is staring him straight in the face:
As I watched [Boehner] defend his position in the House TV studio Thursday morning, I had an uncomfortable thought: Does Boehner want the economy to tank?
My instinct says that he does not, that his concern for Americans’ suffering trumps his party’s interests.
Dana, you have terrible instincts.
I think your mistake may be that you are looking at this as a matter of what John Boehner wants. But the Speaker is not in control of his caucus. He could have tried to exert control over them at some point, and he might have succeeded. But he’s been too afraid of a coup to take the chance. Remember when he tried to negotiate a grand bargain with the president and then discovered that he didn’t have that authority?
He knows that his caucus won’t let him approve a hike in the debt ceiling without a second round of brinksmanship. He doesn’t feel like he has a choice in the matter. He’s not pulling the strings here. He’s like an orange muppet.
The second Debt Ceiling Fiasco isn’t going to happen because the Speaker is a cynic who wants to tank the economy. It’s going to happen because the Speaker is weak and ineffectual and he likes his job more than he cares about other people being out of work. The Second Fiasco is going to happen because his caucus is functionally insane.
Boehner admits it
Boehner: GOP Caucus Like `218 Frogs In A Wheelbarrow’
House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday that passing a bill in the House is like “218 frogs in a wheelbarrow.”
As a denizen of the Frog Pond, I resent that remark.
I can’t believe they are going to try this again, after it blew up so badly in their faces last time.
Do the Tea Partiers in the House not realize this? Do they not realize this doesn’t make Obama look weak, that it makes them look crazy and dangerous?
Look. You’re basically trying to reason with Michele Bachmann in the collective. Do they realize that the Earth is rotating? I don”t think so.
I’m not surprised by them making another stab at it -they ARE crazy, after all- but my brain just finds it hard to comprehend the degree of crazy.
It kinda reminds me of that old SNL sketch with Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest. “You know how you take a razor blade, make a whole bunch of nicks on your face and arms, and then you douse the wounds in tabasco sauce and vinegar? I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS.”
I tried to answer this in another comment in this thread (the one with all the blockquotes).
There is a logic to what they’re doing. They are trying to keep promises they made. Take a look at this, which was written in the Spring of 2010.
All they are doing is hewing to that program. They believe in it.
Or the old SNL “needles in their eyes” bits by Michael O’Donoghue.
You overlook this is about not just the GOP crazy in congress- it’s the absurd, ignorant voters who put them there. Voters who think Hussein was involved in 9/11, think the earth is 4,000 years old, and who bitch and moan about “big government” while using government subsidized roads, transporation, etc.
This massive level of ignorance is partially why I’m very skeptical regarding the future of our republic.
Teh stupid has killed off empires before, no reason to believe we are exempt.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
When your ideology has been proven not to work what else do you do?
Well they’ve banked on it working….this time.
Orange Muppet?
LOL
I have to ask, what is their “paycheck” for trying this again. What is their goal?
Is it simply that they believe that doing this will claw the presidency from Obama’s black fingernails?
Do they believe that crashing the economy will get them control of the senate?
Do they believe that crashing everything will have people coming to them begging them to save them?
Do they actually believe that the Dems will completely cave and allow their budget through thereby making the results of the upcoming election irrelevant?
Do they believe that this is their final chance as they don’t have a hope in November, so its time to go all in while they have a slight chance of succeeding?
Its helpful to figure out what the ultimate aim is of these people. There has to be a longer term goal here.
Boehner is an irrelevancy here. He’s just the spokesman for Paul Ryan and Cantor at this point, and they can use hi as the lightning rod for their unpopular programs.
Those are all good questions. I just have two thoughts that might point toward some answers.
First, when you firmly believe that the only proper function of the government is to dismantle itself, you don’t even have to have a majority, just a large enough minority. California’s government is vastly dysfunctional for all kinds of stupid reasons, but I think the stupidest one is the 2/3 requirement to raise taxes. That basically allows the Republicans to hold the whole state hostage as long as they can take at least a third of the seats in the legislature.
And second, there appears to be some kind of cognitive disorder that limits certain people’s thinking abilities to the immediate short term. This might have to do with a general shortening of attention spans in recent decades, but it’s also a symptom of late-stage monomania: You become so fixated on one thing that you lose the ability to factor anything else into your thinking.
So it’s not seeing the forest for the trees, but it goes beyond that even. All the Tea Party zealots want to do is cut down those fucking trees. When a tree falls it makes a big crashing sound. It’s fun. It feels good. Who cares about the forest?
To shrink the size of the federal government down so it is small enough to drown in a bathtub.
No. They believe the problem we’re facing is unsustainable structural deficits caused by the eventual insolvency of Medicare and Social Security. They want to privatize those programs and everything else that the government does.
They don’t care one way or the other.
They’re not trying to crash anything. They believe that austerity and a balanced budget will actually create economic growth.
They don’t care what the Democrats do. They were elected to drown the government in a bathtub. The Dems are just the enemy standing in their path.
Yes, although they don’t care about future congresses. They care about right now. If they have a chance later, that’s great. But they’re not going to hedge now to help them win reelection. They’re on a mission. They made promises they have no intention of breaking. Crazy promises. But promises nonetheless.
The long term goal is that they pay no taxes because the federal government doesn’t have anything left to do.
What you need to keep in the front of your mind is that when I talk about what “they” are doing, I am not talking about Boehner. Boehner is not driving the car. He has no say in this. “They” are the tea partiers and those afraid to stick up to them. On in this latter sense is Boehner displaying any intentionality.
I don’t remember an orange Muppet named Boner.
I went to check which orange muppet he reminded me of most.
Probably Frazzle:
“I think your mistake may be that you are looking at this as a matter of what John Boehner wants. But the Speaker is not in control of his caucus.”
Well put. Now let’s ask the next question. Who (or better, what) IS in control of his caucus? Think about it.