Perception is not reality

[dano]

(1) Are the Tea Party wing-nuts really crazy? Or are they putting on a
show for a clueless audience?

I wonder if it's the latter.

The first real clue came with Ted Cruz's faux-libuster. He knew he didn't
have a procedural tool to stop things indefinitely, he was just filling
time. Maybe he thought he was at least slowing things up (using the
maximum amount of procedural time available). But he knew it was
procedurally finite, not indefinite.

So what was he doing? Playing to his constituency that wouldn't know the
difference, I think more and more. He was play-acting the Jimmy Stewart
role so that his clueless followers would think he was really being heroic
rather than pointless.

So maybe the Tea Partiers in the House (even "how dare you" Darrell Issa)
actually know that there is no hope of stopping Obamacare, but they want to
be perceived as going to the limit to try to stop it. "Extremity in the
name of liberty is no vice"...

Not only that, but they're trying to flip the blame game on its head. They
want to blame Dems/Obama for not negotiating, when it is they who are not
negotiating in the first place. They may even be able to get their
clueless followers to believe *that* too.

This has nothing to do with governance (or even obstructing governance), it
has only to do with election posturing (for 2014).

They probably think that nothing bad will happen if government shuts down
(who remembers anything about '95, after all), and we almost crunched the
debt ceiling a couple years ago and the sky didn't fall (only elites would
feel anything about the US having a lowered credit rating -- heck, moms and
pops all across the country get by with a shabby credit rating, the country
can do it too, right? -- it's the same reasoning that suggests that if mom
and pop have to balance the budget, that's the only way to go with the
country's economy, even though the economy works completely differently
from a household budget). If the family is a metaphor for country, then
the family budget is a metaphor for the country's budget. FAIL! But it
"feels" right, even if it's drastically wrong...

And if something bad does happen, it's just more blame on Obama -- it's
still "his" economy even of they are the ones that destroyed it (first with
a meager stimulus, then with using the sequester instead of avoiding it,
and now with this nonsense).

This logic just makes too much sense to me to think they are doing anything
else. The question is, will their rhetoric work? Can they succeed in
trashing it all and pinning it on Obama? Those who hate Obama just for
being Obama, might well swallow it.

Is it enough to turn public opinion overall, especially the "swing vote"?

My gut tells me no, but who can be certain. We need to be strong about
placing the blame where it belongs. Take the counterargument seriously,
don't just dismiss it -- it needs to be smacked down hard. The blame is on
the GOP.


(2) Boehner on the rack. The Speaker is simply not in the game anymore.
The wingnuts are intransigent on one side, and now Dems/Obama will not
budge on the other side. Boehner has to decide who he's gonna dance with,
and his choices are both flawed.

Play with the wingnuts, and he's gonna lose popular support, like Gingrich
in '95. Play with Obama and he loses his seat. Either way, maybe this is
when the GOP finally comes apart. Boehner has been struggling to hold it
together for several years now, but maybe no amount of finessing will do it
this time. The wingnuts are pressing the issue and forcing the matter.

Of course, it's really the plutocrats funding the wingnuts that are
pressing the matter. Arrogant fools over playing their hand. Perhaps they
sense defeat and are trying to pull magic out of the hat, throw the long
bomb or something. It has the smell of desperation.

This is where they impale themselves with their own swords.

Cross fingers.