Barack Obama was never likely to be popular with the Republican base. It’s not just that he’s black. He’s first president in 76 years with a foreign parent—and unlike Hulda Hoover, Barack Obama Sr. never even naturalized. While Obama is not the first president to hold two degrees from elite universities—Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did as well—his Ivy predecessors at least disguised their education with a down-home style of speech. Join this cultural inheritance to liberal politics, and of course you have a formula for conflict. But effective parties make conflict work for them. Hate leads to rage, and rage makes you stupid. Republicans have convinced themselves both that President Obama is a revolutionary radical hell-bent upon destroying America as we know it and that he’s so feckless and weak-willed that he’ll always yield to pressure. It’s that contradictory, angry assessment that has brought the GOP to a place where it must either abjectly surrender or force a national default. Calmer analysis would have achieved better results.The Frum piece is really a must read in its entirety.
"I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."Morons. These traitors are literally morons. And for the record, the world's markets disagree violently with that assessment from the Teabagger.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed [Tuesday]. We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show. We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
EK: How much of this is a Boehner problem and how much of this is a House Republicans problem? Which is to say, if Boehner decided to retire tomorrow, is there another House Republican who has enough trust and allegiance in the conference that he or she could manage the institution more effectively? RC: What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power. It’s not so much about Boehner. It’s things like the end of earmarks. They move away from Tom DeLay and they think they're improving the House, but now they have nothing to offer their members. The outside groups don't always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members. And so many of these members now live in the conservative world of talk radio and tea party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible. Leaders are dealing with these expectations that wouldn't exist in a normal environment.
“That’s Ted Cruz’s fault. Ted Cruz led us down this path. This was a disaster from the start,” King said. “I could have predicted this and this is what the leadership predicted three weeks ago when they said they would never pursue defunding because it was going to work against us and we’d be blamed. But Ted Cruz insisted that his people follow him, and we did it, and that’s why we’re in this position. It’s his fault, and he wants us to get him out of it. Listen I’m saying the president should negotiate, but I ‘m saying that this was caused by Ted Cruz and his acolytes in the House of Representatives. They led us down this dead end street.” King continued battering Cruz, citing other prominent Republicans who had attacked Cruz’s strategy in the past. “Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove, Tom Coburn, all solid conservatives said this was a terrible policy to begin with,” King said. “We had a Republican Senator say it was the dopiest idea they’d ever heard. Ted Cruz is to blame, and those in the House who stand with him have brought about this train wreck. It’s up to us to try to get it out and it’s up to the president to step in and stop standing on the sidelines.”No, Mr. King. The President is not obligated to help out the Republian Party in its Civil War. The President is not obligated to solve a problem the Republican Party started. The solution to this whole mess is so fucking simple my 3 three old niece could figure it out: Pass the clean Senate bill. That is your solution, Mr. King. Stop being a coward and vote no on these Obamacare defunding blackmailing hostage taking House CR and tell each sane Republican to do likewise. That is your job, Mr. King, not the President's.
