He's baaaaaaaaaaaaack. Yes, it's me again, dammit! Kerry Eleveld has a great front page diary about the Repugnicants starting to worry about turning themselves into characters that the general populace want to take off after with pitchforks and torches. But there were a couple of quotes in there from a Manu Raju article that boggle the mind when you simply look at them sanely in the light of day. Here's the first one;
"It's tough enough to win elections by offending every demographic group that we can identify," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona "What we've seen in prior elections is, you could say until you're blue in the face: 'That's not my view.' But if the head of the ticket, or those running for the head of the ticket, are espousing that view -- it hurts. It really does."
Kind of hard to argue with that logic, isn't it? Simple logical common sense. Here's the second one from the same article;
"This is a manage-by-crisis town," said Sen. Steve Daines, a freshman Republican and former congressman from Montana. "We've got to get out of this cycle."
Again, kind of hard to argue with simple logic, but kind of surprising to hear it coming from an actual Republican, and Senators no less! Follow me below the Orange Kos heaven cloud for what I can't seem to wrap me head around.
O.K., we all find it refreshing that even the saner Republicans realize the steering wheel on the clown car is broken. Good on ya mate! But the whole problem here is that opening the eyes to a problem should logically lead to a quest for a solution. And it's not like this problem is anything insoluble!
In the Senate the problem is actually quite small. It's a couple of y-chromosome mutants like Calgary Cruz and Mike Lee, with just a dash of Marco Rubio that are drunk in the drivers seat. This is NOT an insoluble problem for them.
In the house, it's a roving band of 40-50 twelve stop program escapees who like to call themselves the "House Freedom Caucus". They roam around like a bunch of I.Q. deficient outlaw bikers sewing destruction and puffing their chests about how tough they are. There is a maximum cap of 435 members of the House of Representatives, so these tinfoil hat enthusiasts make up approximately 10% of the total house. This is truly the definition of the inmates running the asylum, but apparently they scared the shit out of John Boehner, so go figure.
Let's be honest, there is a sizable number of sane and moderate Republican Senators and Representatives out there. They're sane and moderate for a reason, it's what they had to do to get elected by their particular constituents. But they're also a bunch of chickenshits. Their whole excuse for tucking their tails between their legs, running and hiding behind Momma's skirts is their fear of being "primaried from the right". This just doesn't make sense! Just look at 2014. The central G.O.P. decided enough tea party bullshit was enough, they made sure that establishment candidates would be properly funded against tea party challenges, and it worked. The tea party mounted very few challenges, and even Sister Sarah kept her Caribou Barbie mouth shut for the most part.
There's no question, the general population is pissed. They want congress to quit screwing around and start doing what they get paid to do, to legislate and govern. the sane members on both sides of the aisle are there. Sane Republicans are sane for a reason, their constituents want their goodies, not kamikaze missions. If the G.O.P. is going to properly support them, they can actually govern if they want to, the numbers are there in the Senate to get to 60 votes for something the people want, and in the House they will pass a clean funding bill while the brats sit in the corner and kick their feet. This system can work, but only if the participants grow the cojones to make it work. But for the life of me, if you just look at the numbers, I cannot understand how a tail this small can keep wagging a dog this large!
Thanks as always for stopping by!