Thursday, February 13, 2014

The Manly Deficit In The Republican Party

     There are very few men left among congressional Republicants, courage being one of the main tenets of manhood. After Thursday's vote on raising the debt limit unconditionally, I doubt very much there are any men left in Republicant leadership roles. Listening to talk radio yesterday after the vote made me want to find the nearest porcelain receptacle in which to regurgitate every vote I so foolishly donated to the Republicant party over the last 6 years.
     It is completely ineffable to any sane and right thinking person how it is that some in talk radio and in congress can possibly defend the passage of a bill giving President Obama carte blanche to spend as much as he wants over the next 13 months. The strategy that I heard Republicant congressmen and radio pundits alike express is that ObamaCare is going to be the issue in the upcoming mid-term elections, and nothing like a silly old debt limit is going to interfere with that.
     Hey guys! ObamaCare is the law, and as for repeal or replace, it is a dead issue. You and the rest of the scared modicans (moderate Republicans) saw to that last fall when you failed to muster the courage to defund it. Besides, ObamaCare becomes more and more part of the American landscape with each passing day as more Americans sign up and become dependent on subsidies. The ship to reverse ObamaCare has sailed, apparently with some Republicants on board waving foolishly, completely unaware they are headed out to sea.
     The Republicnats I have heard defending the unconditional debt limit bill say they are unable to achieve anything else because the president and congressional Democrats refuse to negotiate. Since when are principles only worth defending when your opposition is agreeable? And what kind of morally inverted world do these defenders of the "give them what they want because they will not negotiate" strategy live in which doing the right thing is only employed when it is comfortable to do so? In their world, courage is predicated upon the non-resistance of your foes. 
     Maybe the Republicants' options are limited because they do not control the senate or the Oval Office. But they could have passed a separate bill on Thursday to remove the ObamaCare subsidies for the insurance companies, with the stipulation that they would only pass a clean debt limit bill if the former bill was put to the floor of the senate for a vote. This would at least get Democrat senators on record voting for insurance company subsidies, and with many of them up for re-election, they may have just voted for the bill to remove them.
     Whether or not my preceding strategy would work is an unknown since the Republicant leadership did not even try it, or anything else for that matter. I think with the public's disgust over ObamaCare and the strain it is placing on the average American family, Republicants could have pushed Democrats with the aforementioned strategy to delay and/or rewrite major parts of the law. But alas, this would have taken the manly virtue of courage, which is sadly missing from Republicant leadership in congress.

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