This from the AP at 6:30 AM, Sunday morning, stating the two-tiered Boehner/House plan originally sent to the Senate on Friday, will be the template for a deal that lets Obama get his debt ceiling raised thru the election next year, and gets 900 billion in cuts, plus a second look in a few months.
In some respects this is better than the deal Obama tried to welsh on last Friday, half a trillion in new taxes not present in this deal.
Since this is not a done deal, and will likely endure some more fine tuning, I’ll leave it up to you to comment on the merits on your own.
Throughout this process my main concern has not been the possible default (almost non-existent) or bond demotion, or partial government shutdown, (none of which I fear on political grounds of giving voters back over to the Democrats next year) but rather whether the GOP could walk away with enough of Obama and Reid’s hide as to settle the matter as to whether they will be considered full fledged hard-ball players of the political establishment, who are just as capable and willing to kick ass as the Democrats.
That too remains to be saw, as Festus Haggen was prone to say.
What also remains to be seen is how GOP legislators, especially the freshmen, will be perceived back home among their voters. Too rigid? Too easy to roll? By Obama? Or By Boehner and Cantor? Or both?
It’s been a tough six months for those newbies, and I am not about to send out a report card here.
But many others already have, and I do have a few comments about that.
All during the Bush second term we were visited with some of the most insipid tricks by the Left imaginable, law school professors drawing up bills of impeachment, and city councils voting on them. Most people considered this just to be a part of the silly season, but on closer inspection (and Bernie Chumm and I were inspecting in those days) what I found astounding…
…was the insistence, the foot-stomping teat-fit throwing insistence that these made-up charges for violating non-existent laws, by approximately .000001% of the American electorate, should carry the force of law.
They were deadly serious.
Bernie coined a term “Whine, Havoc!”.
The GOP gained almost 70 new freshmen in 2010. That is not a majority. The tea parties (I use this term collectively to reflect the people who entered the political process all because of the policies of Barack Obama.) steamrolled the elections of November. But from a mid-term election where “only” 41% of voters bothered to vote, “they” also are not a majority.
In all likelihood it would require a repeat of 2010 in 2012 to get near that majority. And more like 2014 and 2016 as well to secure the foundations….and that is because we know a lot of squishy Republicans need to go as well. Takes time.
So, then, we are still building toward our majority, and now is not the time to take our “deeply held positions” and turn them into shrill demands like those idiots on the Oberlin OH City Council, as if we were a majority of one.
The Beasley Rule
I have a few simple rules, which I’ve written about in the past. They are all umbrella’d by the Beasley Rule, simply stated, is “There are no Pure voters.”
Point being, don’t run voters off simply because they are not as pure as you….and we all know how pure “you” are.
The Bushmills Corollary to the Beasley Rule is “There are no pure conservatives, nor pure congressmen.” So tend to your own knitting when making demands. Don’t come into my district making “we the people demands” on my congressman, or putting words in my mouth.
Actually, that’s just good manners, so find some other way to stake out with ground without sounding like Code Pink.
I don’t like a lot of members of Congress. In fact, I’d like to punch John Boehner in the nose, since, just in the past week, after months of defending him against people who (with clairvoyance) knew what he would do in the several debt and budget crises, I now think he should be removed from the Speaker’s chair. The sooner the better.
But I have no standing to demand it. I have no standing to make any demand on any congressman that is not my own.
But, you see, as for punching Boehner out, he’d have to get way back in back of the line. By the time I could get to Mitch McConnell, well ahead of Boehner, I’d already be carrying a hank of Barbara Boxer’s hair, one of Sheila Jackson Lee’s gold teeth in my pocket and Lisa Murkowski’s (pink) girdle hanging in my belt. And I’d have bloody knuckles bearing the DNA of at least six left-wing US senators. By the time I got to Boehner I may have to use my left hand.
Understand me then, when I take my opinions and turn them into demands, the conversation becomes about me, not them.
This debt ceiling morass and the CR debates before it, has laid in front of even some seasoned members of Congress issues they’d never seen or heard of before. Through it all, I’ve focused on men behaving as men, saying what they mean and meaning what they say, and let the cards fall where they may. Do the right thing and the cards usually fall your way.
But as we’ve watched, men and women we all admire, Dr Sowell, Krauthammer, Rush, Ann Coulter, have staked positions all over the place…it’s a good deal, not-so-good-a-deal, a horrible sell-out. But kibbitzers all. Only 435 have been placed in the line of fire.
Recalling what our friend, Texasgalt, said earlier in the week, “this is not a hill to die kill for”. Neither is it a hill to show our collective behinds on, either.
All but the most cowardly will get a pass with me, and with them, it will be up their constituents.
