Have you ever gone out for a nice quiet dinner only to be seated at the table next to a family with an unruly child? You know, the one who screams, demands, won’t stay in his seat, and runs around the table almost knocking over waiters and waitresses with trays full of savory dishes, drinks, and decadent desserts? While the entire restaurant is appalled and annoyed at the disruption that has now ruined the dynamic of the dinner they had envisioned, the parents sit there indulging the child’s every whim, catering to his demands, and coddling this inappropriate behavior. You want to lecture the parents on how to correct this behavior. You want to tell them to stop giving into the child, put the child in a timeout, or go sit with the child in the car until he chooses to behave appropriately. You want to fuss to the parents that the child is affecting everyone, not just the family.
This is what Boehner is doing with Ted Cruz and his minority tea party cronies. Senator Cruz, who has only been in office for eight months, has somehow managed to wrap House Majority Leader Boehner around his little finger. Rather than funding the government, Cruz, the freshman senator, has been able to make irrational demands that have nothing to do with the funding the government…and he’s been taken seriously by Boehner. He has been able to run around whining about the Affordable Care Act, a bill that passed the House, the Senate, and was signed into law by President Obama, a bill that was deemed Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. This debate has now officially linked the defunding of ACA with the funding of the government and caused a government shutdown, despite the fact that if Boehner had presented the clean CR bill passed by the Senate, the House had the votes to fund the government. All of this, because Boehner doesn’t have the sense, the moral compass, or lets face it, the balls to stand up to the Tea Party and all it’s childish behavior. He continues to coddle them, giving them a larger and stronger platform by not just calling them out, sitting them down, and telling them that their behavior is unacceptable, unreasonable, undemocratic and intolerable. By not allowing the vote on the clean CR bill, he continues to empower Cruz and his Tea Party cronies while weakening himself, the Republican Party, and the United States. He has put the entire country at risk.
This will surely arise again in a few short weeks when the debt ceiling debate begins. This is not just affecting the Tea Party or the Republican Party, but the entire country and in a broader sense, the world. As long as Boehner continues to act as a defunct parent, leader (and I use that term loosely), and generally an incompetent fool, this kind of economic turmoil is going to periodically occur at the hands of a few foolish congress people. I suppose that when they ran on a platform of shutting the government down, they kept their promise. Now, if they would just keep their oath of office to “faithfully discharge the duties of the office” rather than play political grand standing games at the expense of the American people.