Is Eric Cantor insane?
Even Bristol Palin can tell you that approach is "not realistic at all" --and she is a severely sleep deprived teenager. What's his excuse? Malice? If the Obstinance-only Party was a car, it would be as crash-resistant as the Ford Pinto, as difficult to flip as the Suzuki Samurai and boast the performance of an East German Trabant.
For those in the crowd unfamiliar with these notorious cars, the Pinto was famous for exploding on impact, the Samurai was as easy to roll as a drunk after last call, and the Trabant was actually banned from the Autobahn because it couldn't keep up with traffic in the slow lane.
For some reason, the kool-aid drinkers who got the war wrong, the elections wrong, the mood of the country wrong, and the stimulus bill wrong... believe Cantor is just right. Goldilocks, if consistency was a virtue, these folks will get double beds in Heaven. Stuffing that much stupid into one place without creating a black hole ain't easy...
Now that Cantor is showing up on the radar, he's going to have to deal with unintended consequences of fame. For example, Sean Hannity is getting a lot of mileage out of the SNL skit featuring Adam Samberg ... playing Cantor and calling Hannity "the smartest man in the world." I'm guessing Hannity knows his core audience can't tell one Jew from another so he is gettting a double bump here. But Cantor has no option but to laugh and act like this is all just good fun. Seriously, the sketch wasn't that funny. Getting mocked by a lame sketch and feeling compelled to pretend it was funny... that's gotta hurt.
Of course a guy who counts Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Charles Krauthammer, and George Will as his bedside reading buddies is just begging to get hammered, so maybe he's just a glutton for punishment. That would certainly explain why he is once again out there running the obstinance-only line of attack against the housing bill. After all, why wait for the details when you can just say "No!"
At one level you can't blame the guy for being incompetent. One of the hallmarks of the truly incompetent is they are blissfully ignorant of their incompetence. However, there is no excuse for the people in charge of the Obstinance-only Party. I can't think of a worse time to push a fresh face kid who isn't ready for prime time. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think the adults in the room recognize that "change" means more than putting old whine in new bottles. Millions of people were pretty damn clear about that point just a few months ago.
Sigh..... I almost feel like I'm clubbing a rabid baby seal. Maybe that's their strategy... put an incompetent fresh face out there for us to beat like a piñata and we'll eventually feel guilty when he bursts open and we find out he's just another empty suit.
Boy are they in for a shock.