…at least initially:
I think Mark Tomasky is absolultey right about this:
“Never have the priorities for survival and success of a major party’s Washington politicians been so utterly at odds with the priorities required for the country’s survival and success.”
Tomasky also says:
The only thing the Republicans are ready to play, as usual, is roulette, with the cocked gun against the country’s temple, unfortunately, and not their own. It’s worth taking a moment in this context to consider: Never have the priorities for survival and success of a major party’s Washington politicians been so utterly at odds with the priorities required for the country’s survival and success. These Washington Republicans represent the one-third of the country that hates government, despises Obama, and considers obstruction victory.
The rational two-thirds wants compromise, good-faith bargaining, higher taxes on the wealthy, a reasonably strong safety net, and lower defense spending. But the obstructionist one-third wants the opposite. McConnell and Boehner aren’t ideologically committed to that one-third in the way that Jim DeMint and Paul Ryan are, but so far, they have never once stood up to it for the country’s sake. We’ll find out this weekend who they really are.
My Buddy regularly accuses me of having a “hard on” about the GOP. I recently told him that I objected to his always getting a hard on about my hard-ons. That bit of trash talk, which leaves me as annoyed with myself as I am with my Buddy, is sort of true. I’m am perpetually appalled by the GOP and the tail that wags it – the unreasoning Fox News, Tea Party, pry my dead fingers of any compromise minority that has turned the majority of the party into accomplices in derailing their/our exceptional nation. That’s because they can’t bear to let that Ni….. that Ivory Tower, Kenyan, Fifth columnist, jihadist, Communist, Hussein pilot the ship of state. They have no c choice. They can’t very well secede any more. They can only sign futile secession petitions and reveal their Obama Derangement syndrome.
Apparently their only real means of letting the nation how pissed off they are is by punishing all of us for not letting them get their way so they can plunge us over the cliff because their Boehners don’t have the guts to face the fanatics that will be put up against them in future primaries. The chicken shit Boehner crowd will take us over the cliff hanging on the the hope that somehow they can pin the blame on Obama. Their slogan must be something like: you won the election Hussein, now prove you are a leader by enacting our Republican policies as is.
I’ve just finished reading one of the best Thaddeus Stevens biographies. I had hoped to finish it prior to watching the movie Lincoln. Certainly Tommy Lee Jone’s portrayal gave me more reason to finish the book. Reading this – these – Civil War histories helps me appreciate what Lincoln was up against. The South had for a hundred years betrayed the clause in the Declaration of Independence that had made the nation the “exceptional” nation it was meant to be. They traded principle for principal especially as the invention of the cotton gin made it a crop for plutocrats and land speculators. After King Cotton they had to hang their justification on the Bible (God accepted slavery); Science – Slaves were only barely human; State’s Rights (no one can tell us what to do BUT Chief Justice Tawney and Dred Scot can force slavery into the northern states) and Economics (besides, you northerners keep “wage” slaves in your factories)
The South has never gotten over the Civil War or Civil Rights. Even the children grand children of carpetbaggers have fallen into the trap of carrying the South’s Chip-on-its-shoulder and parading around with stars and bars stickers on the back windows of their pickups.
A North Carolina historian told NPR recently that he lamented the South’s ignorance of own history commenting that these Rebel Flag waving later generations didn’t have a clue that the famous General Picket, of Charge fame, hung twenty white North Carolina boys for supporting the Union Cause. So much for southern chivalry. Nathon Bedford Forrest, who later founded the KKK, was infamous for ordering his soldiers to shoot every surrendered black soldier to death after the battle of Ft. Pillow. (Black soldiers returned the favor in later battles)
The Great genius of the South’s ongoing chip on the shoulder has been to join the once hated “Party of Lincoln” (Harry Truman’s grandmother loathed Honest Abe and Republicans) take it over and dedicate it to prolonging white victim-hood. If they have to take the whole nation down with them over the fiscal cliff it will be little like a gallant Civil War flag bearer dying rather than let the colors fall to the ground.
.
