My wife was fuming this morning reading the headlines of Republicans pushing back with their usual clueless bombast on Obama's budget negotiation (Which for the record I am completely against. Unless Defense, the biggest 'entitlement', is on the table, the whole thing is a sham.)
But, my wife, who was clearly miffed, said the utter truth: They Lost.
The Republicans lost. Big time. They didn't lose because their candidates sucked. They lost because their policies suck; and now after all this to begin their stubborn, ignorant obstruction all over again; there is only one solution: Lock up the GOP and throw away the key.
And Obama is the guy to do it. The great thing about 911, that seminal, unexamined event that 'changed the world', is the United States is now a virtual dictatorship. Obama should dissolve Congress because we are in a state of Fiscal Emergency and dictate the terms of agreement and go from there. Then in a couple years. After things have stabilized, we can try to get the Constitution up and running again, which has been languishing for a decade or more anyway.
We have a bi-partisan war party. We appear to have a bi-partisan screw Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid Party (any 'deal' will include reduction in the social contract. All so we can pay our debt-holders.) Both these bi-partisan efforts have pretty much brought the country to ruin so it's time for a new approach. The benevolent dictator. For a while. Until the Republicans are the unearthed fossils of an earlier time – the time of trickle-down-voodoo-economics with tax breaks for billionaires and workfare and Tasers for the poor. The time when critical thinking was considered a Communist plot. The time when a minimum wage was a Communist plot. The time when the only good regulation on big banks, food and oil was no regulation. The time when the only bad war was peace. The time when every fours years in a vote-pandering scam, they'd trot out red-meat Constitutional amendments against a woman's reproductive rights, against LGBT marriage, for a balanced budget which is another name for top-down class war. The time when Republicans thought they were kings of the world.
But Republicans aren't kings of the world in this political landscape, Democrats are. Republicans are a fractured, splintered party. They got right-wing libertarians, right-wing Neo-cons, right-wing religious fanatics and Wall Street vampires. Republicans are the Party of fear; Democrats are the party of hope – as tenuous as that is.
So enough listening to the Boehners, McConnells, Krauthammers, Kristols and Ryans of the world. They are idiots all. They shouldn't be taken seriously. They laughed at Geithner's proposal? They shouldn't even be at the table. They should be at the kids' table enjoying a food fight, which is where their natural talents lay. They have lost legitimacy as an opposition party. If we have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, then shouldn't we have one about not negotiating with irresponsible, foolish loons?
Republicans aren't against Government, they are against People. They aren't for justice, they are for punishment. They aren't for smart fiscal policy they are for intellectual, moral and fiscal bankruptcy.
If I was the President I'd call their bluff. Sit on my hands, until the pressure against their obstruction compels them to be responsible partners to The People of the United States as opposed to their current fealty to the money power and their base of clueless Kansans.
On the other hand, if I was President Obama, I'd lock them up, throw away the key and do what is right for the country: bring the billionaires, the war machine and Big Business to heel. Make a real investment in infrastructure and new wave manufacturing.
Otherwise, if it's just politics as usual? You can kiss your retirement years goodbye.