Step right up and enjoy the posturing, rhetoric, and antics of our congressional clown crew...
Over to your right you'll see the amazing vocal endurance of Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz as he tosses red meat to the base...
... To be serious, there are a large group of people, who don't understand why the rest of us consider what Ted Cruz did (a 21 hour "filibuster" of a motion in relation to items within a continuing resolution for funding the federal government for the next six months), both harmful to the country, and nothing more than grandstanding.
For them, it looks like Cruz was (in the composite words of many Americans on the right):
"Taking a brave and principled stand against the funding of a bad law that will harm our country."
In reality, he was doing no such thing.
Cruz is being maligned by his own party because he was being a clown. This "filibuster" was nothing but a clown show.
It may be viscerally satisfying, but it's idiotic. It will do absolutely NOTHING for the Republicans, of for those against Obamacare, except throw red meat to the stupider side of the base.
This is underpants gnomes strategy.
Step one: "Non-filibuster a piece of already passed legislation that I can't stop by doing this... but that's OK I wasn't really trying to, really I was just trying to get media attention and attract donations from the less intelligent and aware side of my political base".
Step two: ... uh....
Step three: Electoral Victory?
"But, one brave man, standing up for what he believes in, can do amazing things. A small group of patriots can change the world, just look at the American revolution."
No, they can't. No guns involved in this one. No big foreign war distracting the occupying power. No actual fight going on among the actual fighters... just a series of bargaining and trading; while the rhetorical fight goes on among the spectators.
It may be emotionally satisfying rhetoric, but that's all it is, rhetoric.
You are not a member of the patriotic few, bravely standing up against the despotic elite, risking all for freedom.
In fact, unless you support drug legalization, getting the state out of marriage...and almost everything else... giving up legislating morality and goodness entirely... You AREN'T EVEN ON THE GOODGUYS SIDE.
You're just another guy on the badguys side, who wants the badguys to tax the tea a little differently.
Oh and as "just another guy", you actually aren't on their side at all...
You're a spectator rooting for your team from... not even the stands... from the comfort of your own home; with the game streamed lived via satellite into your living room.
"But what would you have us do? Just give up, let the Democrats run the country into the ground"
Nope... Not at all...
I'd have you stop assuming the rhetorical mantle of revolutionary patriot because it makes you feel good; and stop supporting things which reinforce that feeling, without actually DOING anything.
If you buy Ted Cruz's stunt, you are perpetuating this crap.
If you want to actually do something... ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. Get involved with your political party on a local level. Get onto policy committees. Become a subject matter expert for the party on something you know, and use that position to help steer the party, and the politicians in the party, in the right direction.
That's actually doing something. This thing with Cruz? It's just something you can say you supported so you can feel morally vindicated while not actually doing anything.
"You'll see... Cruz was right, this is bad law and we must stop it. Cruz will be vindicated, time will tell"
Well of COURSE he's RIGHT, we all know that... it's AWFUL law... even Jon Stewart thinks it's bad law... but that doesn't mean he was doing any good... or even try to for that matter.
Vindicated how?
Sure he's increasing his own fundraising, and certainly he's right about Obama care... but to be vindicated you have to have done or said something substantive, and then been proven right later.
How has he done that?
He's hurt the Republican party badly with the center, and provided yet another target for mockery and ridicule... and to scare those who think this sort of thing is either stupid or crazy...
Yes, he's increased his own fundraising... and tripled that of everyone on the left.
This is not some brave heroic last stand. This was a foregone conclusion. Obamacare would never, under any circumstances, be defunded. This wasn't a filibuster. This wasn't moral courage.
If it was a serious attempt to stop Obamacare, fine, that would be great. Even if it were a futile attempt, if it were even structurally capable of stopping it, sure... it wasn't and isn't.
It wasn't really even a symbolic gesture.
It was pandering, to the lowest common denominator. It was Ted Cruz setting himself up to be the poster boy for the low information voters of the right.
And he knew EXACTLY what he was doing... By all accounts Cruz is a brilliant man.
"It doesn't matter if he was doomed to fail, it was the right thing to do anyway. Standing up for what's right is never wrong"
If that's what he was actually doing, I wouldn't be so irritated by this.
I'm irritated because this is what they do instead of something useful. "I supported Ted Cruz's fillibuster but those nasty democrats and RINOs passed it anyway"...
The people who believe this, don't seem to understand that what Cruz did actually hurt us. Us being those of us who really fight against government overreach, and bad law.
It gave cover to the people who wanted to do nothing anyway, it encouraged a few whackjobs to make spectacles of themselves, and it INCREASED the morale and assumed moral authority of the other side.
Do you not realize how stupid and ridiculous this makes anti-obamacare people to the middle? How hysterical it makes them appear to the other sides donors? How this is a permanent harmful soundbite/video clip?
It's idiots like this that made them able to paint Mitt Romney as an ultraconservative ultra right damn near American Taliban...
When in fact, he wasn't conservative enough for a lot of people to bother even coming out, and they just stayed home rather than vote.
This is NOT a dedicated small group of principled people fighting against government overreach... That would be excellent.
This is the Republican equivalent of a college student "sticking it to the man" by wearing Che Guevara t-shirt an shouting about oppression and justice, out in front of the admin building.
"You don't understand... Cruz is different... he's the only one of the Republicans with the guts and the principle to stand up and do something".
If he had actually done that, I would more than agree... I'd be cheering him on too.
But he didn't.
If he were actually different... I'd be 100% behind him... Hell, I think he's a good man, and in general he will probably be a good senator, though it's a bit early to tell. If nothing else, he's a LOT smarter than most Senators.
But really... other than that... he's not much different than any other professional politician.
I've read the mans bio, read some of his speeches, hell I was even on a conference call with him and Marco Rubio at some party event during the campaign last year.
Yeah, he's accomplished, and he's got a hell of a back story (great family tale), but... what is it you think makes him so special?
He's a smart guy, apparently a great legal mind, clerked for Rehnquist, editor of the Harvard law review... which are great things sure... but but I don't see what you seem to see that makes him particularly exceptional among senators. He's been a politician basically since law school; either full or part time.
He spent less than a year in private practice before going into an administration job, then less than 4 years out of the fedgov, where he ran for office twice, before going back to the fedgov.
He's a professional politician.
I think he's probably going to be a good senator (kinda hard to tell 9 months in), but I don't see anything there that says anything other than professional politician... He's a smart man and seemingly a good man... and those are great things... but he's still a professional politician, and has never been anything but a professional politician.
I mean... he actually voted... in fact the senate voted unanimously 100-0... for the motion he was supposedly filibustering...
How can you even call it a filibuster if you're going to vote for it?
So... In the next show, we have the "Government Shutdown".
As of right now, the Republicans in congress have refused to sign any continuing appropriations bills that require the raising of the U.S. federal debt ceiling, and which fund Obamacare.
Therefore, the Republicans are trying to pull a repeat of 1996 and "shut down the government"; again to foster the illusion that they are taking a principled stand against excess spending and government waste etc... etc...
They aren't.
"Why can't they just balance the budget, instead of raising the debt ceiling again... That's not a solution, that's just making the problem worse?"
That's the question of a well meaning, intelligent person, looking at this problem from a rational perspective...
So it's completely irrelevant to anything they do in Washington of course.
First thing, the whole "Defund Obamacare" spiel is, and always has been, a sham. It's more redmeat for the base. It's not going to stop Obamacare, never was going to, never could; and even if it could, the republicans couldn't get it past the senate, or a presidential veto, or an override etc... etc...
It's just PR.
The Republicans saw what happened to Mitt Romney. They know that a large portion of the electorate doesn't think they're conservative enough and so won't bother to vote for them... This is how they're trying to address that issue. Nothing more substantive than that.
The debt ceiling thing is a sham too though... always has been, as is all the grandstanding surrounding it:
The Republicans can point and shout all they want, and "refuse to be a party to" etc... etc...
However, since it is quite literally impossible for any continuing appropriation to be passed that doesn't require increasing the debt ceiling... In fact, even without a continuing appropriation the debt ceiling will need to be increased (because of credit payments, entitlements, and other already legislated spending); the debt ceiling is GOING to be raised.
Either that, or an accounting trick will be used to do the same thing.
It's not a solution. It's a requirement of the circumstances.
Balancing the budget... that's a joke; given that we haven't actually PASSED a budget or OPERATED under a budget , since 1997. From 1998, the government hasn't been funded with a passed budget, it's been funded with omnibus spending and special appropropriation bills, and continuing resolutions.
In fact, since Obama was elected, we haven't even managed to pass an omnibus spending bill, and have exclusively funded the government with special appropriations and continuing resolutions.
The reality of the "debt ceiling" is, the U.S. is NOT going to default on its credit payments, under any circumstances.
In the first place, a U.S. credit default would trigger a world wide economic collapse and long term depression the likes of which have not been dreamed of outside of dystopian fiction.
So yeah... that's bad... let's not do that.
Even if that weren't true, the politicians in this country are not going to let people miss entitlement payments... which is the whole reason why we don't have a budget in the first place...
Every politician in America knows that if they get blamed for their constituents missing a social security check, they are done... dead... never to be elected to anything, even dog catcher, again.
So, any threat not to raise the debt ceiling, or to have a true and complete government shutdown, really is just grandstanding.
Until we make serious cuts to entitlements, we are not going to have anything close to a balanced budget. No politician in this country who has actually managed to get elected and wants to be re-elected is going to EVER under any circumstances, vote to cut entitlements. Therefore we are never going to have a balanced budget again... or at least not until there is a real unavoidable crisis, where they can cover themselves by saying "we had to do it to save the country", and their opponents can only look like irresponsible liars if they try to say otherwise...
Of course, if this country weren't filled with economically and politically ignorant "citizens", then perhaps the electorate as a whole would understand that we've long past the point at which such a crisis could be avoided, and that something really needs to be done right now...
Unfortunately, what looked like it was going to be the first major group of voters working for entitlement cuts in this country, the "tea party"; was quickly overrun by a huge number of these idiots who, completely un-self aware were saying, with complete sincerity "get the government out of healthcare and welfare... but don't touch my social security and medicare".
The politicians noticed this... Particularly the smart ones... Like, say, Ted Cruz.
