Posted on 09/26/2013 4:22:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
While many people will attack GOP leaders in the Senate for not understanding what Sen. Ted Cruz is doing, don’t count me as one of them. You see GOP leadership has been handicapped for quite some time now.
Mark Twain, who witnessed the impeachment debacle of Andrew Johnson in the House of Representatives in 1868, pegged it: “[I] was reporter in a legislature two sessions and the same in Congress one session,” Twain wrote, “and thus learned to know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”
You must understand that it’s very difficult for politicians to recognize another politician, as in the case of Sen. Cruz, who is actually doing the things he campaigned on, like getting rid of Obamacare.
Cruz, in this case, is an oddball to his Senate colleagues.
Keeping promises is a novel concept that many politicians have difficulty accepting at face value.
This is increasingly true in the GOP, where the solution for Obamacare is Romneycare, for Common Core is No Child Left Behind, for War in Syria is a bigger, better, badder war in Iraq; and where the solution for TARP, and bailouts is, um…TARP and bailouts?
When another politician keeps promises, other politicians think: “What’s he up to?” imagining that it’s a ploy to run for president or vice president or governor. “Or, perhaps,” they think, “he just doesn’t know any better.”
They fall back on the liberal trick of pretending someone is just too stupid to know any better.
Yes, they have all said they want to get rid of Obamacare, at least if they’re Republican.
They campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare, they fundraised on it, went to barbecues and got applause for condemning Obamacare.
But that doesn’t mean they actually want to DO something about getting rid of Obamacare.
Now I can understand why the average human being might think that they should DO something about it, especially if these politicians campaigned about DOING something about it.
But these Republicans didn’t go to the trouble of stump speeches and barbecues and town halls and meet-and-greets and press conferences and get-out-the-vote to go to Congress to get things done.
They went to Congress so that they could get to go back to Congress, again and again, and again.
And in that process of going to Congress again and again and again, politicians from both parties often become so acclimated by the exigencies of campaigning that I sometimes wonder if there’s actually a human inside the mechanism anymore-- if their soul doesn’t eventually shrink away or just hide in a corner, like in the further recesses of the appendix.
Years of constant battle with the press, with the opposition, and with their too-young staffers to avoid saying anything that might result in a “gotcha” moment has to eventually affect the thinking of even the most narcissistic people.
And right on cue, politicians are the most narcissistic people.
They have to be.
Otherwise they would not be able to live with themselves.
As a class politicians don’t keep promises.
Even more, they know they don’t keep promises. They’re OK with that.
After all: Don’t you know how important these people are?
Promises are for little people; only little people keep promises.
And only a real narcissist can live with logic like that. The higher you go on the politics totem, the tighter the logic gets.
Sen. John McCain’s head is so big, for example, that he thinks his head keeps the Capitol dome from falling in on itself.
For the folks in DC -- especially in the GOP-- the whole idea of keeping promises and getting things done is too radical, too revolutionary.
And that’s why this may be the last hurrah for the old GOP.
Increasingly, I suspect that most Republican politicians, as least the ones in Congress, want Obamacare implemented. You don’t fundraise as effectively when you defeat Obamacare.
No.
You fundraise effectively on the latest Obamacare outrage.
So Sens. Mitch McConnell and John McCain and the rest of the McClique up in DC have arranged a compromise.
Obamacare stays intact, the spending goes on unabated and the fundraising for 2014 will continue for the GOP.
The GOP leaders call this peace.
But peace was never a choice.
“You were given the choice between war and dishonor,” Winston Churchill chided GOP wannabe Neville Chamberlain on the eve of the world war; a war that was largely crafted on a series of compromises by Chamberlain ala McClique.
“You chose dishonor, and you will have war,” thundered Churchill.
Sadly, here too, war it will be, eventually.
The sooner the Republican Party dies, the sooner something better can take its place. It is a mess of stinking old corpses at the moment, who have no reason for being there except being there.
Cruz’s intention is to destroy the party so that Democrats control both houses and the White House forever with a tiny but ideologically pure Republican party in opposition.
GOP has chossen dishonor as have the Democrats.
But there are some honorable Americans and the honorable Americans support what Cruz is doing. None of the honorable Americans support either party
I’d say in the last year...I’ve come to the agreement that half the Republican senators had their peak of enthusiasm in the 1980s....for the last twenty years....they’ve been simply an anchor with no ship.
I’d just as much prefer to see some Democrat replace Senator McCain or the others, and get on with a real political party emerging as well.
If you understood how foolish they now look on TV...they’d realize that no one is going to take them serious in 2014.
I don't mind being considered a wacko bird either.
Unfortunately there is no guarantee that another party will be better and will beat the crooked rat party
You backing the republican cowards in the senate???
If so SHAME.
Cruz’s intention is to destroy the party so that Democrats control both houses and the White House forever with a tiny but ideologically pure Republican party in opposition.
Actually you have it exactly opposite. You are describing the McConnell do nothing tip toe to the next election plan. McConnell and nearly all of the Senate GOP are quite content with their status as the minority party.
Maybe you are one, nooby.
The GOP-E is doing quite a fine job of destroying the party already.
By backing the republican cowards in the Senate the poster shows what he really is
Excellent obit for the gop.
Enjoy permanent minority status in both houses. It suits you.
I really don’t understand why McConnell goes along with this since he faces reelection in 2014, but at least he is honest in his feelings, unlike the RINO from TN Lamar Alexander who also faces reelection next year
You meant McCain, didn’t you.
When all the dust settles JM and his clique will be meeting in a closet somewhere.
He’s referring to McCain calling Cruz and Paul “Whacko Birds.”
McConnell is wetting his pants. He wants the hot potato off his plate and back in the House.
Its the whacko birds vs. the dodo birds.
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