The beat just goes on and on
Sooner or later, the government will resume its functions. Sooner or later, we will raise the debt limit. So why don’t we do this sooner rather than later?
Sen. John McCain, on the floor of the U.S. Senate
Republicans are no longer beating a dead horse. They’re beating the glue!
A few hardcore conservatives in the U.S. House are now trying to find any gambit they can to “win” something from President Obama, who has stood firm throughout the continuing government shutdown, and approaching U.S. default.
He’s held the cards for weeks, and more-and-more Republicans are thinking about throwing in their hands – if only John Boehner would allow them to vote on a “clean” continuing resolution.
The CR, as it’s called, is supposed to be a stopgap measure that’s designed to prevent the government from being forced to have a going out of business sale – while Congress and the President hash out a longer term budget.
But when the ever-so-unlikable junior Senator from Texas – Ted Cruz – decided he’d gum-up the works with his crusade to defund Obamacare, he not only helped push the government into a shutdown – he’s forced his fellow Republicans to commit to his folly, or face recriminations from his moneyed Tea Party backers.
But there are a few elder-statesmen in Congress, who understand the luster has faded from Cruz’ monkey-shines.
John McCain is now loudly calling for a vote on that “clean” CR.
And he’s doing it without any fear that he’ll face the wrath of the Tea Party.
“The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached,” President Obama said last Monday.
He’s obviously done some head-counting.
There are various tallies that indicate that all 200 Democrats in the House would vote for a continuing resolution with no strings attached, and that, at least, 19 Republicans would too.
Only 217 votes are needed.
“There are some Republicans in the House who have to stop pretending that Mitch McConnell is the Majority of the Senate, and that Mitt Romney is the President of the United States. We have to deal with the reality – and the math,” says the Republican Rep. from the 15th District of Pennsylvania – Charlie Dent.
What’s that? A reference to Mitt Romney?
Dent knows that Romney’s pledge to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, didn’t scare up enough votes for him to “repeal and replace” anything except his presidential campaign headquarters. That’s a sentiment that most Democrats, and many Republicans already knew when this whole thing started.
Dent and McCain not only realize that the Republican foot-dragging isn’t just hurting the country, but it’s damaging the Republican’s so-called “brand.”
According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 70 percent of American adults disapprove of how Republicans are handling budget negotiations. That’s up from 63 percent during a previous poll.
John Boehner, though, still refuses to budge. He’s not only losing, he must want to lose even harder.
It doesn’t matter that economists everywhere are predicting that a refusal to raise the debt limit would lead to a complete dismantling of America’s borrowing power.
Thanks to their unhinged ideology, and their hatred of Obama (no small part of this), Republicans are giving Democrats a victory for which they didn’t even ask.
One conservative columnist, John Podhoretz, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Post that summed up everything you need to know in the title: “Suicide of the Right.”
At one point, Podhoretz zeroes in on the bitter back-and-forth between Obama and John Boehner. “One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 in one congressional district in Ohio,” he writes.
Yeah, but Boehner believes that once you get that horse down, and you starting beating it, don’t give up until it turns into glue.
He’s wrong, but I’m sure not gonna tell him.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net