GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest…. Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.
Yes, Republicans in the House have truly managed to accomplish the impossible. As you’re reading these words, the puck is being dropped at the Kim Jong-il Ice Palace in downtown Hell. Republicans have managed to turn the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal against them. Normally as Conservative as the day is long, not even the stalwarts at WSJ could fathom what John Boehner has wrought with his epic fumbling of the payroll tax debate.
The short version is that House Republicans, most of whom have pledged to NEVER raise taxes, defeated a bill that would have extended the payroll tax rollback for another two months. What ideological and intellectual masturbation might occur doing those two month is a bit wonkish, even for me, but that’s not my concern at this moment in time. No, my concern is trying to parse how Republicans who have pledged to NEVER raised taxes could have, by defeating the bill, agreed to raise taxes on 160 million Americans. I can’t even begin to imagine how gleefully Democrats watched this whole fiasco go down. Not only did Boehner and his Teapublican caucus lose a game of Russian Roulette that they created, they did so while playing with bullets in five of six chambers.
OK, so now House Republicans have agreed to cave and pass the extension. I’m not at all sure that will undue the damage, but that’s another story for another time.
November may be a long ways away, but I think we’ve just witnessed the manufacturing of the ammunition Democrats will use against Republicans this fall. The sad reality is that the wounds are self-inflicted. Why Republicans chose to fight this battle in the manner they have requires an intellect far nimbler than my own. To someone like myself, possessed of limited intellect and even less understanding, it looks like John Boehner and his fellow non-entities stared down the barrel of a loaded shotgun…and then proceeded to pull the trigger.
You’ll have to pardon me for hitching a ride on the Schadenfreude Express, but this episode seems to clearly demonstrate two very simple truths:
1) John Boehner is a terrible, horrible, very bad Speaker of the House. A Republican leader who can’t enforce order among a party that adores order is a comedy gold mine. Simply put, Boehner is very bad at his job. If you don’t believe me, ask Rachel Maddow. She’ll be happy to tell you.
2) Republicans cannot govern without imploding in a paroxysm of self-interest, corruption, and ineptitude. It might be fun to watch…except that so much is at stake at this precarious moment in our country’s history.
I’m not going to sit here and predict what will happen on Election Night, but Democrats have to be feeling pretty good about themselves. Don’t worry, though; there’s still PLENTY of time left for Democrats to screw the pooch. If Democrats are smart, they’ll step back and watch with wonder and amazement as Republicans buy the rope, string it up, and then hang themselves.
That’s a very BIG “if”, however….
