bronzeage
I am a river to my people
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2005
- Posts
- 49,685
Given the number of failed attempts to kill ACA, abject failure must play pretty well in their home districts. It seems like there are fewer Republicans but more ideologically driven conservatives. Maybe a party purge is what they're after. Plenty of right wingers on the GB would seem to be okay with that.
Suppose they go into to these attempts knowing they won't get ACA repealed or defunded and the "win" is forcing the confrontation in the first place? You know, like a kid will throw a tantrum to get attention or some consolation prize for not getting it all his own way to start. As long as he gets anything but ignored or isolated until he learns how to behave better, he's gonna keep on throwing tantrums. And it doesn't seem like the Representatives behind this are going to get much in the way of censure from their own party or even much voter backlash in their home districts.
At any rate, it's a bit silly to go around declaring winners and losers at this point. The electorate will do that in 13 months, during the off-year elections. Those usually don't favor the party in the White House and are often characterized by low voter turn-out.
Don't forget, the deal for temporary funding still hasn't gone through. Call me cynical, but even the best case scenario here is to be watching Federal Budgetfuck, the sequel, coming to political theater this January. At this point it might as well be a regular telenovella, except with really shitty scriptwriters and no hot latina babes.
This is a disaster for the GOP and it will take a couple of weeks for it to really sink in.
The GOP is the preacher who saved the choir and lost the church. Except for getting caught having sex in a men's room, the worst thing a Congressman can do is appear ineffective. Going back to the home district and bragging about how he shut down the government for 16 days, just to reopen it without gaining any of the goals stated at the start is the definition of ineffective.
It's easy for the GOP to forget they depend upon the middle ground voter to win elections. Even a safe gerrymandered GOP district doesn't have to send back the same Congressman.
We won't hear much about it in public, but the whisper campaign over the next 3 or 4 months will be all about, "Who screwed the pooch?"
