Apparently someone once said, though no one know who, that “God takes care of fools, drunks, and the United States of America”. Given recent events, even we non-believers must pause and wonder sometimes.
Consider this. The present day Democratic Party must be the most incompetent political party that has ever maintained its existence on the face of the earth. There is only one exception, and that appears to be the present day Republican Party. Given the media environment in this country, given their huge advantage in money, and given their success in destroying the economy, while a Democrat has been president, in a way that has mostly been under the radar, the Republicans should be shoo-ins to sweep in 2014 and crush the Democrats in 2016. Yet, right now it looks like this is not to be, and that once again the Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
We can perhaps forgive them for not believing that Obama would stand firm in the recent debt limit/government shutdown fight. After all, despite the advice of eminent bloggers such as myself, he's caved before. But, having suffered a crushing defeat due to the fact that they acted in an utterly insane manner, they are now convincing themselves that they weren't crazy enough.
For a certain block of House conservatives, the ones who drove Speaker John Boehner toward a government shutdown and near-default against his will, the lesson of the last few weeks isn't that they overreached. Not that they made unachievable demands, put their leadership in an impossible position, damaged their party's position with the public and left a deep uncertainty about whether the GOP conference can recover and legislate.
No, what they're taking away from the 2013 crisis is: They didn't go far enough.
They aren't angry with Speaker John Boehner for ultimately capitulating to Democratic demands. They're frustrated with their more mainstream colleagues who put him in that position.
“I'm more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you. It's been Republicans here who apparently always want to fight, but they want to fight the next fight, that have given Speaker Boehner the inability to be successful in this fight,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) told reporters Wednesday. “So if anybody should be kicked out, it's probably those Republicans… who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to the American people. Those are the people who should be looking behind their back.”
There is a certain weird symmetry (or is it asymmetry? ) in American politics. When Republicans lose, they blame it on the fact that they weren't right wing enough, despite the fact that when they are actually honest about their positions, voters desert them in droves. When Democrats lose, they also blame it on the fact that they weren't right wing enough, despite ample evidence that there is widespread support for what are now considered far left positions, such as maintaining Social Security at its current levels, or taxing the rich at, say, the same rate or even higher than the rest of us pay. If a day ever came when Democrats advocated for what people actually want as forcefully as Republicans advocate for the smokescreens they use to hide their real policies, we might see some progress in this country. In the meantime, the believers among us can only thank God for protecting the USA from a fate worse than what we are actually getting, and the non-believers among us can only shake our heads and wonder.
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