So I'm watching Bill Maher the other night and his panel consists of "Boss Hogg," Haley Barbour, "No Labels" guy Jon Huntsman and Andrea "CW" Mitchell Greenspan. Maher asks the group the "Worst question in the world:" "Why can't Washington get anything done?"
What followed was the kind of crap you usually watch Maher to escape: There's no civility! Even in the '90's George Mitchell and Bob Dole got along! Why do Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid hate each other so much?
Barbour sorrowfully whined, Obama won't lead!
No one, not even Maher, gave the blindingly obvious answer:
One of the parties is dominated by Fools, Koch tools and Nihlists (the "FKN Party").*
And the most blindingly obvious example of this happened just a year ago -- The Government Shutdown, when the FKN party shut down the fkn government, costing $24 billion and all kinds of suffering -- from job losses to lack of cancer treatments. All in a last-ditch, doomed attempt to stop the ACA, a law designed to prevent more suffering.
That disaster should be rubbed in the face of every member of the FKN Party from now until November. I know that people have short memories, and a year is a lifetime politically, and that the ACA roll-out problems eclipsed the Shutdown. But that doesn't mean that people can't be reminded.
Republicans are running away from it. Paul Ryan continues his unbroken streak of dishonesty by a revisionist history of the shutdown in today's Time Magazine:
Q. You also described the government shutdown as a suicide mission.
A. Yeah. If the goal was to get rid of Obamacare, it wasn’t going to achieve that goal. Stopping discretionary spending does not stop entitlement spending. To suggest otherwise was not correct.
Then why did you vote for it? Why did you vote against the Senate deal that would have ended it early? (And while we're at it -- why do you begrudge "entitlement spending" when you got plenty of that sweet stuff in survivor benefits?)
If Ryan and others are trying to run away from the Shutdown, it's worth trying to pin it on all of the Republicans, if only to motivate our base to get off their couch and vote. Do you really want another government shutdown? Do you really want 50 repeal of ACA votes that will pass both Houses if the GOP wins the Senate? Do you really want another default threat?
People need shorthand cues to motivate them.
Remind them about the shutdown by the FKN Party.
*Alternatively "Fools, Knaves and Nihlists