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It’s over.
At least for now, the idea of putting a gun to the head of the U.S. government trying to get your way has ended. How this came about, why it happened, is, in the last case, no mystery. The “American public” was tired of the nutty drama that has occupied Washington, DC, ever since the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives following the 2010 elections. No one paying attention, no one who was not some sort of dedicated radical, or nihilistic fool, saw any benefit for the Republicans, aside from “glory” and the ability to say they had fought as hard as they could, to the open warfare in DC.
The government shutdown last time around finally did the trick, as the TerryReport indicated it would at the time. In general, people don’t want to be constantly bothered worrying about the government and whether the national parks are going to be open and America’s bills paid on time. That’s not what people elected representatives to do. They want those who are being paid to do their job and keep as much of the mess out of our faces as much as possible.
What really made all of this a dead end game was the fact that there was NO PLAN, other than for Obama to give in and declare his presidency over three years early. Gee, why didn’t he want to do that? Can’t figure that one out.
The new cohort of tea party inspired radicals in the House don’t know how to negotiate, don’t have a position which would satisfy them for the time being if they could get there (they don’t know what they want, in other words) and the idea that they were going to defeat a weakened president with threats was nuts. Of course, they might have been able to lure this smart president into doing something stupid, in which case they could roll out the impeachment plan (which is coming down the road anyway, circa 2015).
Any smart general in war time, or any smart politician at all times, is playing a multi-level game in which various outcomes represent victory. There is no one path to winning, because when one side changes, the other side changes, too, and the dynamic of public perception is always changing, always evolving. Inside the closed loop of the right wing (state) media, however, idiocy gets applauded and people think they are winning even when a 90 MPH freight train is headed right toward them.
The media thrive on the conflict, not on the resolution. (An agreement is a small story compared to days or weeks of “shutdown!” fear mongering.) The distortion field that Republicans have built for themselves with their captured media is helping to defeat them. A king can always get 40 people to tell him how great he is, but the one person who can show him where he is wrong could be indispensable. In their 40 year long drive to counter “liberal bias”, the right has wound up creating a media faucet that spews right wing bias, as if two wrongs could make everything wonderful.
The newer Republicans don’t know how to play smart because many of them are, 1. inexperienced in politics and, 2. so convinced they are right about everything that hitting themselves over the head with a frying pan doesn’t make much of an impression. In politics, you can be as right as the Ten Commandments, but if the voters don’t see it that way, and don’t agree, then you are as wrong as cow poop on fine china.
Only 28 Republicans voted for the “clean” increase in the debt ceiling, giving the Dems just enough votes to pass it (the rest of them get to claim, if the voters ask, that they are still “fighting the good fight”.) This concession, spearheaded by Boehner, is based on the obvious realization that, hey, this is an election year and the voters might just have a say in this thing. This doesn’t mean, of course, that Obama’s plans will now move forward. It just means that one stupid means of holding them up has been dropped. Progress?
Doug Terry, 2.12.14
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