I have a couple sayings, when speaking politics, such as 'people aren't bad because they're republicans, they're republicans because they're bad people'. Chestnuts like this amuse my audience of rescued stray animals no end, but I believe it strikes at the core of the issue. We're not dealing with rational actors, we're dealing with people who are, quite literally psychopaths, at least of the second order.
Here's another aphorism I'm fond of: 'the problem with republicans is democrats."
Republicans play hard ball, they're playing hard ball right now. Fine. Happy to have it. I understand I'm a lonely voice already, however, I submit that the problem is not their politics, it's the policies.
Hard ball, you say? They're not playing hardball, they're destroying the democracy.
Maybe, or maybe the democrats are doing what they always do, they're bringing a knife to a gun fight. Here's a partial list of counter offers that would be hard ball and make the base happy:
1) Pass and return to the senate a clean CR or the board of directors of the five biggest banks in the country are in jail by next Tuesday. The NSA spied on them too, think we don't have a phone book size stack of their crimes?
2) Pass and return to the senate a clean CR at pre-sequester levels, with an increase on taxes for income over $1MM, an end to the carried income loophole and a public option or I fire up the platinum furnace over at the Fed.
3) Pass a proper budget, not a CR, at pre-sequester levels or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, John Yu, Andrew Card, John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzales mysteriously end up on the docket of a certain court in The Netherlands. I don't include W because I can't imagine a court would find that he was capable of understanding the ramifications of his actions.
Are these realistic? Nope. Now, why? Because they're policies we can't get on board with or because democrats refuse to play hard ball. All of the counter offers above are things Obama should have called for in January of 2009... but he didn't. He looked forward, not backward and now we're dealing with psychopaths.
I meet a lot of liberals who still believe 'if I could just make the right argument, I could get my republican brother-in-law to come on board.' Absolutely not. Not even a little bit. This is because elected republicans are for nothing.
They are not for business, they are against unions.
They are not for the family, they are against gays.
They are not for security, they are against brown people.
They are not for self-reliance and small government, they are against, well, brown people again.
They are not for the second amendment, they are against... you guessed it.
They are not for conservatism, they are against liberalism.
Democrats will never govern effectively if they continue to either believe or act like they believe they are dealing with honest actors across the aisle who happen to have a different view of the role of government, or policy priorities. We are dealing with bad people, psychopaths, who only stand in opposition, and who only understand brute strength. We have it. We have strength on our side, we refuse to use it, and so I reiterate, the problem with republicans is democrats.