Look Over There
Life and politics are not fair. Fairness, if there is such, would result in burgeoning Republican campaign chests.
The swelling war chests would not be from willing contributions, but would come from payments from President Obama and Hillary Clinton for jobs well done.
Republican members of Congress are providing much better campaign material for the class warriors than could be bought at any price from a bevy of political advisors, consultants, and activists.
The Washingtonians should heed the adage that, if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. Regardless of the merits and desirability of defunding all or part of ObamaCare, the move to socialized medicine will not fall under sledge hammer blows. So, until the Republicans replace that hammer with a whisk broom, their hard heads will appear denser and less desirable than the bloodied heads of their opponents.
What a gift this debacle has been for the President. When is the last time his abysmal failures in foreign policy and diplomacy were discussed in the press?Remember red lines in the sand in Syria? How about Russian President Putin, not a friend of either our country or our President, lifting Obama out of the corner of the Syrian box into which he had painted himself, and becoming the dominant player in this volatile part of the world?
Then, because of NSA spying, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff snubs the President of the United States by canceling her trip to visit him. This follows the snub of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani who refused to shake hands with our President at the U.N. But, hey!, they are now buddy-buddy over the telephone as Obama laps up the Iranian assurances that their frenetic activity in enriching uranium is just to make electricity.
Meanwhile, back on the home front, the shenanigans of Lois Lerner and her IRS buddies targeting Tea Party organizations and Dr. Ben Carson, who had the audacity to criticize ObamaCare in front of the law’s Godfather, have been forgotten.
What about NSA collecting and storing the phone records of every American with a telephone? Anyone remember that? Has it been discussed in the news for several weeks?
All of this has been shoved off the news because no one in Washington seems to understand two words--negotiation and compromise. Negotiations are defined as discussions aimed at reaching an agreement. A compromise is an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.
Both sides in the budget dispute have been bull headed in negotiating and compromising, with the President and Harry Ried being the most intransigent in their positions, on keeping the government running.
The Republican sine qua non is the dismantling of ObamaCare. That system was already drowning under its own weight. Initially, a little tweaking like extending to all the delays that Obama gave to a few or repealing the medical device tax that even some class warriors do not like would have added some lead weights to the drowning body and may have gotten one or more budget resolution bills through the Senate and to the White House. That would have put the decision whether to keep government lights on squarely on the President’s back.
Instead of a tweak, however, the Republican controlled House of Representatives went in for the kill with a sledge hammer. This set both sides in concrete and has pushed all of Obama’s foibles, mistakes, mismanagement, and lack of leadership completely out of the news.
Now all the press and public attention is on the government’s big sleep. Those barricades around the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, and even the closed gates at the U.S. cemetery at Normandy, France, are all blamed on the Republicans. The President never misses an opportunity to make a show of shutting down one more department and making sure that the press knows about it.
According to the President and the press, Republican action is curtailing the WIC (Women, Infants, Children) program for nursing assistance. That program is to teach mothers how to breastfeed. What a shame. I may have grown taller than the 6’3” I reached if someone had just taught my mother how to breastfeed when I was born.
So here’s the perspective.
Breastfeeding has replaced the tragedy of Benghazi so badly handled by both Obama and Hillary in the news of the day. The tragedy of new mothers on food stamps not knowing how to feed their babies the old natural way is, of course, clearly the fault of Republicans who will not cave to President Obama and Harry Ried, who, in turn, will not move even a half inch toward the Republican House.
The winners in this standoff are clearly Obama and Clinton. It would be a real show of fairness if they would pay for this boost in their ratings.
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