Jonathan Strong, writing at National Review Online, explains that the Republicans are wary of doing anything that might distract people from their campaign against the Affordable Care Act. Therefore, Mitch McConnell doesn’t intend to engage in any high-profile retaliatory procedural actions in the Senate. That’s fine with me, but it calls to mind McConnell’s immediate response to the invocation of the Nuclear Option. He took to the Senate floor and declared not that Harry Reid had just done something historical or significant or even abominable, but that Reid was merely trying to distract people from ObamaCare.
I thought that was the oddest response in the world. I expected fire and brimstone and steaming wrath and promises of vengeance, or even impeachment. And I got a mild complaint about Reid trying to change the narrative.
This makes me think that the Republicans are truly on another one of their Moby Dick adventures, like Whitewater, like the White House Travel Office, like Vince Foster, like l’affaire Lewinsky, like Saddam’s WMD, like Fast and Furious, like Solyndra, like the New Black Panther Party, like Benghazi, and like the most recent government shutdown. More than anything, it reminds me of when they convinced themselves not that the presidential polling numbers could be oversampling blacks, but that they were oversampling blacks. It’s like their theory that systematically trying to make it harder for blacks to vote would result in reduced black turnout rather than a black community more determined than ever to cast their ballots.
It’s some variation of stupidity and delusion, with a little evil sprinkled into the mix. And this really is the only area where I find the Republicans unpredictable. I know what they won’t agree to, which makes it easy to offer it to them without fear that they will accept it. “Have some Chained CPI, boys, really, all we need in return is some revenue.”
What I have trouble predicting is their next obsession, and how absurdly far they will take it. These people are still talking about Benghazi. As long as I’ve watched them, I still have to admit that I didn’t see that coming.
Still, their greatest weakness is their predictability. They do not know how to adapt to changing circumstances, nor how to trim their sails when it would be to their advantage. As a result, they march into one well-prepared crossfire after another.
Or pitch perfect if this is part of the institutional GOP long term game plan.
Yeah, but it’s not.
Time to install more threshing blades, now that we know which direction they’ll keep on heading in.
And they don’t realize their own vulnerability on the health care issue when people realize what they have done in the states.
The biggest problem with Obamacare’s rollout is being caused intentionally by Republicans
It is 15% higher to subsidize all those emergency room visits for anything than it is to subsidize primary care and those emergency room visits through Medicaid. That means that the fortunate few with good insurance pay 15% more in premiums on their insurance than they would if they spread that cost across all taxpayers in the country and in their state. Because the emergency room is not going to let someone die or refuse service because of lack of resources. (Unless they are a heartless private operation with no sense of reputation.)
It is very much a “Please proceed, elephants” moment on health care. Let’s have that real conversation.
And while we’re talking about the healthcare.gov website, let’s discuss how much sense bringing IT staff into civil service makes and ending the multiple layers of contractors and subcontractors who can’t talk to each other. Another great conversation to have.
Want to talk about Benghazi? Let’s talk about Mary Matalin’s role in setting up the 60 Minutes bogus story.
Yes, please proceed.
very interesting. do you have more on BEN GHAZI!!! and Mary Matalin?
emptywheel: 60 Minutes Writes the Final Installment of the Benghazi Left Behind Novels
The book that “Morgan Jones” was promoting by being on 60 Minutes was published by Simon & Schuster under the Threshold imprint. The producer/editor/manager (i.e. who manages book selection to publish) of Threshold is Mary Matalin.
emptywheel: Morgan Jones’s Three Unverifiable Claims
Isn’t it interesting how bullshit can get mainstreamed by the Wall Street media and some of the players behind making it happen. Now, do you understand how someone like Lara Logan, embedded war correspondent extraordinaire could become the vehicle of such a tale?
at the time (2012) I wondered if it had something to do with getting Romney elected. of course the pic of him smirking did in his chances to use it. has there been any exploration of that angle?
There is also a report suspecting that Lara Logan’s lobbyist husband helped shop the story as well.
wow! thanks
The Orange Place posted some responses yesterday and they struck me as highly strange. Very inappropriate in that they seemed disconnected from the issues and consequences. Seemed to me the Tgopers were completely at a loss.
Well, they got Issa holding hearings in Ga, AZ, TX, and NC to help develop new talking points.
Impeachment? We could only be so lucky…
Booman –
“They do not know how to adapt to changing circumstances, nor how to trim their sails when it would be to their advantage.”
You may not have any idea how true that is.
I just got done reading a book, “Anxious Decades,” about the 1920s and 1930s.
I will be talking here about the business Republicans, not the Tea Party nation killers.
And what were the Republicans back then talking about? Balanced budgets being the end all and be all of governing. Whatever is good for business is good for America. Fighting anything and everything that percolated down to the masses. They fought every – EVERY – part of the New Deal in the courts. Guess which one is the only one still standing? Social Security. SS was that generation’s ACA.
“Actual benefits to anyone but the rich? Oh my!”
Remember the saying, “The business of America is business”?
And did you know that “trickle down theory” originated in the 1920s? And it was as ridiculed then as it was in Reagan’s time. But THEY still buy into it today.
It was amazing to me, reading all about those times. Not only did the Republicans then talk about the VERY SAME things they talk about now, but THEY NOW STILL DO NOT TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE (if you allow for ACA to be equal to SS). The viewpoint has not budged ONE millimeter.
How did they pass down the same exact mindset to their progeny?
They are stuck in some pre-Teddy-Roosevelt fantasyland. And they keep on thinking that the rest of the world will agree with them, that only the rich are entitled to a decent life.
(The odd thing is that they can keep the Red state goobers from seeing how the goobers get NOTHING from aligning with the rich.)