Careful What You Wish For

Careful What You Wish For

House: 245 Rep to 188 Dem

Senate: 54 Rep to 46 Dem

The Republicans swept into majorities in both the House and Senate riding an ever larger bubble of anger and fear:

Keystone! IRS!! RUSSSIA!!! OBAMACARE!!!! FEMA Camps!!!! Death Panels!!!!! Save Marriage!!!!!! Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

The GOP have stoked their base into a feverish pitch and promised that when they took over Congress that they would destroy the tyrant Obama and make everything right again in Murica!

So how are they doing?

Boehner caved under pressure and passed a clean funding bill for DHS after all the grandstanding about the freak out over Obama’s executive order to not deport 5 million productive undocumented residents that have direct family ties. This is terribly embarrassing for Boehner of course, and much of the GOP hard right base is gleeful for him failing. But they are missing the larger point that Obama has broken their bluff, not just called their bluff, but shutting down the government just doesn’t work anymore. They cannot even shutdown a portion of the government for one week to get Obama to enforce a law he doesn’t believe is a good law. This is not about spending priorities, taxes, healthcare, wars, but just political theatre exploiting a most vulnerable minority to feed the insatiable hunger of racism. And the GOP cannot make it stick even a week. Fail.

Netanyahu speech blew up in Boehner's face. 200 former Israeli generals came out against the speech as causing direct harm to the US-Israel friendship. Wasn’t carried by any major US networks. Worst of all Netanyahu had absolutely no alternative to offer other than telling Americans we should attack Iran ourselves. Again this hits Boehner hard and perhaps others in the GOP are snickering, but rather than strengthen the foreign policy muscles of the GOP, it revealed that the GOP is easily abused as a campaign stop for foreign states, and that it is not control of outcomes. Fail.

Failed to override the Obama veto of Keystone XL. In another all-in move the GOP put themselves behind the Keystone where the Koch brothers get to move tar sand across our country refine it in their gulf coast refineries and sell CO2 to China? Meanwhile when it spills like Deepwater Horizon, we will pay the true costs. Why did they dig themselves this hole? Rather than create jobs, the only reason why you build a pipeline is to save money over transporting by rail or truck. It is estimated that about 16,000 truck drivers and railroad workers will be made redundant. No matter how much enthusiasm you have for the atmosphere, Keystone will cause a net loss of jobs in exchange for profits that will be untaxed and offshore. Fail. And then going all-in and attempting an override and coming up short? Epic Fail.

Finally they got ObamaCare in front of the Supreme Court and no matter how the court decides, they lose: The easiest option for the Supreme Court is to invoke the Chevron Doctrine and simply decide the esoteric interpretation of what congress meant by the word “state” when it comes whether or not it is legal for the Federal government to sponsor an exchange for private insurance companies to sell insurance to people even if their own states do not want their poor to have health insurance. That is what this lawsuit is about. It is a so-called State’s Rights issue to make sure that the individual states have the right to be sure that the working poor do not have access to health insurance - even if the Federal government is picking up 100% of the costs. That is what they are fighting for, the right to keep their citizens scared, desperate and in constant fear of being an indentured servant to endless medical bills. So they rolled this shitball decision to SCOTUS. So SCOTUS an either say Obama acted unconstitutional and kill the insurance for 8 million people in 10 days, or they can say it is unconstitutional but issue a stay on any action for a year, or again they can invoke the Chevron decision and say it is up to the POTUS to interpret the laws they best they can for the benefit of the American people. This seems like a no brainer to me, SCOTUS is going to use Chevron and get out of the way. They sure as hell not going to put their heads in a noose and kill insurance for 8 million people because the GOP is not clever enough to do their own dirty work. Maybe, maybe, SCOTUS will be bought off and give the GOP a partial with a year stay. But that only sets the GOP up with the most painful of all possible options - they would have to craft their own national health policy to give insurance to 8 million people. And they would have to do it in one year. And they would have to do it with the support of the Left while at the same time continuing to sling shit and follow their strategy of making government fail. The obligation to govern is sitting on their laps as hot sweaty mess. Fail.

0 for 4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/transcript-of-netanyahus-remarks-to-congress.html?_r=0

Originally posted on Facebook on March 05, 2015.