Letter 2 America for January 27, 2015

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Dear America,

The big news today is the blizzard here in the northeastern United States.  The storm portends to dump up to three feet of snow in parts of Connecticut where I live, and at least two feet everywhere.  But all in all, while that news is fun for the kids, who have today and maybe even tomorrow off from school all over this state, the real fun is happening in Washington and Iowa.  That is where the Republicans are foreshadowing the next two political years, and hence, their party's role in them.  In Iowa, the blather is flowing fast as the various kings and king makers--including the grand-master of bloviation, Donald Trump (does he seriously believe that anyone but the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe takes him seriously, much less as a candidate for the presidency)--ply their trade in an effort to occupy the spotlight and thus garner another bullet point on their resumes.  Some of them are trying to become the designated front-runner of the Republican Party in anticipation of the next Iowa caucuses, which won't occur for almost a year, by making the noises that they think will garner both attention and support for their proposed platforms.  Thus, the conservative, Ted Cruz crowd is rattling everything from sabres to the bb's in their empty skulls where their brains are supposed to be, and the more sober contingent is trying to look temperate and prudent next to them--not a more difficult feat than distinguishing squirrels from elephants--while using stale partisan rhetoric that will easily identify them as conservative, but politically so.  Jeb Bush, for example, is hawking the Keystone XL pipeline without a shred of cogent analysis of the issues involved, just because that is the conservative thing to say, while he eschews hawkish positions on the middle-east and endorses the Republican creed on taxes...that is, never increase them even if it's to avoid national penury and the policies it necessitates.  But the real show is still, as always, in the halls of Congress where the non-candidates are still hard at work trying to look sagacious.

In that pursuit, McBoehnell gave a joint interview to Scott Pelley of CBS News, who played a little game of "what's dead on arrival in Congress" with them.  Their answers were so predictable as to obscure the point of doing such a thing, but it did elucidate the attitudes of the two men, and that made it clear that in Washington, it is business as usual in our nation's legislature.  The obvious gravamen of their remarks was that The President, the only Democrat with any power in Washington these days, is on the wrong track with regard to everything but his inclinations toward fast-tracking more trade agreements and escalating American involvement in the Arab wars, both Republican preferences and issues on which most Democrats think Mr. Obama is misguided.  What a surprise; the Republican leadership will support only what they want while they condemn as partisan intransigence any position contrary to their own preferences.   Most importantly though, the brazenness of their tones, especially Boehner's, betrayed their intention to render the balance of Mr. Obama's presidency a nullity...not realizing that that is the Democrats' plan.  To the extent that the Republicans get nothing done from now until the 2016 election, they are digging their own hole, regardless of the philosophical justification they employ to excuse their inaction.  They are volunteering to be treated by the Democrats at election time in the same way in which they treated the hapless Democrats in 2010 and 2012 by being just as hapless.  They are in power, and the onus to cooperate in the political enterprise is now on them as they are in control of the process.  So the extent to which they dig in their heels is the extent to which the American people will blame them, and they have demonstrated that they don't understand that.  Setting aside the interview, they have made their own case by their actions in Congress so far, and they have managed to show themselves to be incompetent in a matter of just a few weeks.  They took up the abortion issue by trying to pass a bill banning the procedure after 20 weeks, which is four to six weeks short of the end of the second trimester of pregnancy, which in turn is what the Supreme Court allowed under Row v. Wade as a matter of constitutional right.  Thus, the law was conceived, pun intended, as a failure, and then on top of their obdurate pursuit of that failure, they left a necessary contingent of female representatives out of in the cold by excluding exceptions for incest and rape.  The result was that the bill had to be withdrawn before it got voted down...a miscalculation so blatant that Boehner and the rest of the Republican leadership were left with their bare, red faces hanging out on what they wanted to use as a line in the sand between them and the Democrats.  And then of course there is the XL, which McConnell has publicly stated he is going to shove through the newly Republican Senate with the full knowledge that President Obama will veto it, and that there isn't enough support in either body to override the veto.  He thinks that the American people will be so incensed that they will disavow the Democratic credo in general, but he fails to realize that when the veto comes, it will be accompanied by a high profile--the process itself will guaranty that The President gets more golden opportunities to address the public, including a televised news conference or speech if Mr. Obama is smart--repudiation of the XL pipeline that will make the Republicans look foolish.  You can't harp on energy independence while you seek to enable export of petroleum and distillates without looking like a hypocrite...or a fool...and that is what the Republicans are in their support of a petroleum industry, both here and in Canada, that wants nothing but profit and is thus motivated by nothing else.  As to abortion, the nation is more than 50% women, and women want to have control of their own reproductive systems...at least the majority do: another loser for the Republican troglodyte wing.

The thing is, the Democrats showed all these pitfalls to the Republicans, and the Republicans took advantage of them starting less than a decade ago.  When health care reform was on the congressional agenda, it wasn't the Republicans that made a single payer system impossible, nor did they make passage of the Affordable Care Act difficult.  It was a contingent of "Blue Dogs" in the Democratic Party that thwarted what was the will of 60% of the American people as recently as the second term of the W. Bush administration, and maybe even to this day.  And the show of party discord wasn't an effect of anything the Republicans did.  It was Bart Stupak and about a dozen sycophants, whom I use to call Stupak and the Stupettes, who pointed out that the Democrats' house was not in order when the voting on the ACA was about to take place.  Substitute the Tea Party Kool-aid tipplers for the Blue Dogs, and the Republican women for Stupak and the Stupettes, and you've got the same situation.  They have watched it all before when it afflicted the opposition, and they're trying to do the same things as if they can do it better.  They can't.  Washington is always just more of the same, and what we get from it never gets any better.

Your friend,

Mike

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This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on January 27, 2015 11:39 AM.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on January 27, 2015 11:39 AM.

Letter 2 America for January 23, 2015 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for January 30, 2015 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

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