"All The Republicans Want For Not Destroying The Economy Is Everything"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/all-republicans-want-in-exchange-for.html
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"Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe"
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Congress Cracks Up
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: September 27, 2013 379 Comments
Our challenge today is to explain how Congress evolved into our national nutcase.
Gail Collins
Related in Opinion
Charles M. Blow: The Captain Ahabs of the House (September 28, 2013)
Readers’ Comments
I am thinking mainly of the House Republicans. Back in the good old days, last week, these were the guys who said they would vote to raise the debt ceiling only if Obamacare was axed and the Keystone XL pipeline was built.
Ah, last week. Giants strode the earth last week. Last week our nation was governed by men and women who were, as a matter of principle, willing to pay the nation’s creditors when the bills were due just as long as the president canceled his central domestic initiative and oil shippers got a new pipe.
But that was then. This week the House Republican leaders were looking at a long, long list of must-haves that also included changes in regulations relating to coal ash, reduction in Civil Service pensions, restrictions on malpractice suits and an end to some greenhouse gas regulations.
And their members found that list too restrictive. Behind-the-scenes discussion continued about more things the Republicans could demand. A ban on late-term abortions? A trillion-dollar budget cut? Bring back the gold standard? Bring back the bustle? It’s 2013 and anything is possible.
So, what do you think is wrong with these people? Thanks to gerrymandered Congressional districts and the Tea Party, we do seem to have a surprising number of elected officials who actually don’t believe that raising the debt limit so the government can pay its bills is a good plan. (“All that does is just say: ‘Well, you’ve got a little bit more credit — keep spending,’ ” Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina once told a radio interviewer.)
But there’s got to be more to it than that. Let’s try to think of three other reasons the United States Congress continues to behave as if it’s playing the Jack Nicholson part in “The Shining.” I’ll go first.
1. The Republicans are desperately, obsessively demonizing Obamacare to cover up the fact that they don’t want to do anything to Medicare or Social Security. Those used to be the party’s obsession — remember privatizing Social Security? But that was before they noticed that the entire Republican base is on Social Security.
Ranting about Obamacare, which one New Hampshire politician recently compared to the Fugitive Slave Act, is an excellent way to give the impression that you’re fighting to reduce entitlements without having to do anything about the actual entitlements.
2. It’s all about Twitter. Social media have transformed Congress’s younger generation. (While much of the Senate is arguably too old to know how to use the TV remote, three of the four leaders of this week’s faux filibuster are 42.) Twitter in particular makes politicians even more self-obsessed than they used to be. “Talking about tomorrow’s #DefundObamacare vote tonight on Hannity. Be sure to tune in!” twittered Senator Ted Cruz on Thursday.
Cruz kept demanding that the Senate “listen to the American people,” but he really meant that they should listen to his Twitter followers. A politician riding on a wave of tweets feels as if the nation is cheering his every word, even when the nation is actually reading the sports page while a select splinter of hard-core supporters manically pound away on their smartphones. A hundred thousand people cheering you on in the social media feels like a mass movement. But this is a gigantic country. You can find 100,000 people who believe in a secret plot by Belgium to corner the market on beetroot.
Richard Baker, the co-author of “The American Senate,” says the late Senator Robert Byrd waged a war against cellphones on the Senate floor: “When he entered the room, there was this whooshing under the desks.” But Byrd is gone, and now we have Ted Cruz.
3. Zombie apocalypse. Only possible explanation.
On Friday, the Senate finally managed to vote to keep the government running until mid-November, when we’d get to do this all over again. It’s now up to the House, which will be having an unusual working weekend while the Republicans decide whether to pass the Senate bill and move on, or festoon it with anti-Obamacare amendments.
The majority whip, Kevin McCarthy, suggested that his colleagues might want to join him for an evening showing of the movie “Prisoners.” One Republican aide worried that the media might read too much into the title, what with the country being held hostage to the House’s current psychosis and all. The media are actually disappointed that McCarthy passed up “Insidious” and “Despicable Me.”
Cynics would say that keeping the government going for a few more weeks is just the kind of modest, uncontroversial proposal that automatically vanishes into the black hole that is the current House of Representatives. But maybe there’s hope. After all, on Friday the House members did show they could pass legislation in a purposeful, bipartisan fashion. They approved a bill naming a building in Virginia after a deceased federal worker.
With fiscal crisis after fiscal crisis, Republicans can decoy, distract and run out the clock on issues like immigration, education reform, global warming, and others. And may even extort some concessions with their gun-to-the-head budget tactics.
I think that's the House conservatives' main strategy. Sludge up the works as much as they can, take as many meaningless votes as they can, take as many recesses as they can, and if they end the two-year session with no significant legislation damaging to their selfish interests, they can return home victorious. And their uninformed constituents, snookered once again, will in their ignorance send them back for another term, angry and bitter at something they just can't put their finger on.
We have a dysfunctional government - - the kind that we used to mock. It is full of small, petty people who cater to campaign funding sources and political zealots who are greedy, cruel, and unable to see the irony in their own beliefs. (I'm pretty sure that Jesus wouldn't want us to starve children by cutting off food stamps, but that's how some in Congress have explained their vote.)
Sadly, these people are there because we sent them, so we share the blame for their hateful attitudes and actions.
Besides Twitter, I also blame reality shows that reward bad behavior with good ratings. How else does a senator who has been in the office only nine months get so much national attention? If Ted Cruz succeeds he will have proved that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Finally, I blame 30-second TV ads which reach more Americans than NYT news and facts and are tailored to our short attention spans. A young woman goes to the doctor and a creepy Uncle Sam wields a speculum to perform a vaginal exam on her; that's Obamacare.
Citizens who depend on 140-character tweets or 30-second TV ads for their source of information on national issues get the "nutcase" politicians they deserve.
Perhaps the more prosaic reasons are connected with the same forces that Gibbon noted in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire centuries ago. An explosion of millennial cults (how else to explain the Tea Party's sudden rise?), the loss of empire as the barbarians re-take the periphery (check, definitely), a civilization too huge to manage properly, but most important, the lack of an adequate response to decline. A proud tradition of republican (little 'r') statesmanship and consensus being pushed aside to make way for rule by cruel, degenerate fools and a rabble kept at bay and in ignorance through an endless parade of bread and circuses.
The circuses rule today as never before, parading the thrill of governmental train wrecks 24/7. No ego is apparently too wretched or too shamed not to profit from it all through the simple ability to type.
But as to the Democrats, this crowd has been taken over by the progressives who for the past three or four decades were marginalized within their own party caucus. Now that the old farts in the middle have mostly faded away, they need some serious adult supervision--like the college kid getting a credit card for the first time and being told, "Now watch your spending." Ya, hello.
I'll patiently wait in the middle of the road for something wonderful to happen between these two polar opposites but somehow I feel major roadkill coming on for the country.
Good point. Someone much smarter than me has said that social media just reinforces what you already know or think or like or want. Since politicians love to play to the crowd, they now have an automatic cheering section they can carry around on their smart phone.
Like the discovery of fire, or the more recent discovery of electricity, I guess we'll also learn to master the new media without figuratively burning the house down or electrocuting ourselves--or throwing a monkey wrench into the democratic process.