Saturday, March 02, 2013

Republicans have turned the old Political Dance into a game of Keep Away

David Brooks, did another of his dull columns, lamenting the dance that president and the Republicans in Congress are in the midst of. Oh, he's not completely wrong. There is regularly some dance going on between the parties in Washington, when they have to share power. A rumba. A twist. A bit of the forbidden (on the the GOP convention floor) dance.

But, as always, Brooks ignores what is happening for what he likes the sound of. Where Brooks sees a dance floor and dance, there's actually playground. And the GOP is disrupting a cracking good game of kickball, so they can play Keep Away. And they've decided that the president is "it".

So now, as we gently slide into sequestration like one slides into a warm bath, let's look back at the folks some complain the president just isn't properly negotiating and compromising with.

But first, a little music. Something to hum as we think of the GOP. "Whatever it is, I'm against it."



"Whatever it is, they're against it!" - Yes. My play on the song.

But, as conservatives and timid news folk will claim, "They aren't opposed to things just cause Obama is for them!"

Newt Gingrich:
“An Obama plan led and driven by Obama in this atmosphere with the level of hostility towards the president and the way he goads the hostility I think is very hard to imagine that bill, that his bill is going to pass the House.”
What is it that the president does to "goad" the GOP? You know, he talks. He offers an idea. He acts like he's president. You know, the usual insufferable things. Sadly, Gingrich voiced what the GOP was trying not to out and out does. They won't work with the president. They've spent four years trying to block as much as they can, stonewall negotiations, and then they seek to brag to supporters about it. Repeatedly bills have passed through Congress, and the president mentions he approves of it...and it's dead in the water. They've polled the GOP to see this effect. What they've found is when they support certain ideas and bills, when they are told the president also supports them, most of them will oppose the idea. Just that simple.

The Hagel nomination. Their is a certain way the cabinet gets picked. The president offers up a candidate and the Senate confirms. It usually goes like this. Not always though. Sometimes their is a serious issue with the choice. A flaw. An issue of suitability  And in those cases the nomination faces challenges. Many times this leads to reevaluating the candidate. And that's how the system should work. But with Hagel, like with Susan Rice earlier, the walls went up instantly in the Senate Republican ranks. They were determined to bar confirmation. They went so far as to eagerly believe in a made up group called Friends of Hamas, as it gave reason to call Hagel a threat. But this and the claims of being anti-Semitic or having a deep secret waiting to emerge just were not cutting it. But, by god, the Republicans tried to make it work.

And it doesn't end there. So many positions across the executive branch sit vacant still. Many judicial posts are not getting filled, Congress refusing to act on the offered candidates. You'd think that the GOP was hostile to government.

The past three years of budget talks! I previously linked to a piece on how the GOP leaders have talked down efforts to cut spending. As the president has made cuts, or agreed to cuts, the Republicans continually turns around looks into a camera and cry out, "The president won't cut spending!" It is just amazing. More than the way they never have something new say, or bring to the bargaining table, this fact makes them an actual broken record. The same speeches keeps coming out of their mouths.

Whether the president makes cuts or not, Cantor, Boehner, and McConnell will go on TV and say the president just wants to balloon the budget. It doesn't matter. They seem incapable of being serious.

It's like their some comedic troops...Like they're the...

NO!

I am NOT going there. The Marx Brothers are awesome. Cantor, Boehner, and McConnell suck.

Instead let's just leave with some final words from the great Will Rogers.




But why leave it at that? A bit more insight from nearly one hundred years back.



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