Who Are the Puppet Masters?

I suppose it is a tremendous missed opportunity but I’m glad I was unavailable to comment during the run-up and starting bell of the Shutdown.  I am saved from being stridently indignant and shrill.  Anything I could say at this point about the transparent and irresponsible behavior of the House Republicans would be redundant.  I couldn’t possibly make a difference by adding to the stunning pile of invective shoveled onto that hapless crew.  Rather than gulping bitter draughts of rage, I can return to a state of serene wonderment.  How could the Tea Party pirates so completely Shanghai the House Republicans? 

For those coming out of hyperdrive suspended animation, the House of Representatives did not pass the (usually) routine Continuing Resolution to continue funding the government beyond the end of the fiscal year.  As a practical matter, that means that 800,000 government workers get “furloughed”;  make no mistake, that means their livelihood has ended abruptly and the reset date is unknowable.  There must be a compelling reason for such a cruel and hostile procedural maneuver against them.  There are other inconveniences as well: shuttered national parks, curtailment of numerous boring but urgent bureaucratic functions.  The hostage-taking metaphor has been used a hundred times and it’s apt.  The majority in the House will not allow the CR to pass unless their demands are met.  The ransom is to surrender Obamacare.  That object is almost incidental.  It’s the tactic itself that’s reprehensible.  Stop. I promised myself I wouldn’t go there.

  

House Majority Leader John Boehner comes out looking decidedly the worse for wear.  See the video link for – relatively speaking – the majestic utterances of a statesman. Published on YouTube on September 28, in it, Boehner accedes to the unalterable fact that the Affordable Care Act – I mean, Obamacare – is the law of the land:  it’s not actually a bill to be negotiated in a conference committee.  Now you don’t see any sign of that understanding.  What a difference five days can make.  That must have been one helluva party.  Something must have bitten him.