Countdown to Shutdown

You know, I for the life of me don't understand how the GOP House leadership got themselves in this predicament, except for the bits I do get. The whole moderate/Tea Party kerfuffle about whether a clean CR can be done might just look like a shitfight in the monkeyhouse, but it really isn't anything so natural. There aren't even enough GOP moderates, apparently, to make a shitfight worthwhile. And I think we all know that the government shutdown is the precious.  Why is that? Because if you fuck up the government children, you can get back to the garden. Except, like, the GOP idea of the garden is where someone actually paves paradise and puts up a parking lot, so I don't even know what they are nostalgic for--the promises of Goodman Gingrich and his Contract for America Travelling Circus? Prophet Norquist's scorched earth future where the government baby is drowned in the bathtub of state?

It's weird that they are resting their shallow hopes for relevance on destruction, as if no one would notice. As if the GOP wouldn't get blamed, especially after telegraphing and even proclaiming it was what they wanted. And that is why I know how they got here. After demonizing the ACA in fundraising letter after fundraising letter--how could they back down now? They went and compared it to every horrifying travesty under the sun. But a shutdown will cost a buttload of money and do the economy no favors. It will remind every person of what the government is--the thing we kind of voted for. And, not being repealed or delayed, the enrollment for the ACA exchanges will go on regardless, and people who might not have been able to afford health care, might finally be able to set themselves up with a plan. Is it perfect? No. But seeing any doctor is better than seeing none. It will make a difference in people's lives.

This dumb, futile nonsense is actually a bit of theater, isn't it? A show put on for the Tea Party twits who believe fundraising letters and think the jobless or under-employed souls with shitty health care prospects are simply less-than and want them to remain so--because that belief somehow acts as a talisman against their own fears of less-than care. They don't even want to know that the ACA might even do them any favors--it must favor some different, slack-jaw, greedy "them".  And maybe it's an old rite that Sen. Ted Cruz is putting on, challenging, with the promise of killing and eating, the current House Leadership so that he can, although a freshman Senator, become something of a Big Deal by acquiring their leadership powers. Sounds primitive, but makes a weird kind of political sense, no? In the kind of "better to be feared than loved" way?

Anyhow, I think they are grandiosely fucking up according to their recognizable pathologies, and despite the pain a government shutdown would inflict, well, at least if they play with that shiny object, they might forget to not pass a debt limit bill.

(Although they have given me about zero confidence on that score. You know, the zero confidence credit rating institutions might also be feeling about now. Like the stock market might be feeling about now.)

What I'm saying is--The Tea Party that brought us these spoiled ignorant cave people can not die fast enough. And I surely hope the Democrats take the House in the next go-round or our economy will never have a proper recovery.