Stuck On Stupid
By Mitch Berg
To: US Senate Republicans
From: Mitch Berg, Pissed-Off Conservative
Re: Get off the can, get on the stick.
Senators,
I get the need for compromise.
I get the fact that the Democrats still control the Senate, and they’re not going to get their way for the asking.
I get that.
What I do not get is how none of you establishment Republicans ever seems to learn from history. It was six years ago when you had a majority, and a sitting President, and you – many of you occupying space in the Senate right now – blinked, and gave the Democrat minority everything they wanted – a legislative Manhattan, in exchange for some meaningless procedural trinkets.
And you’re doing it again, cutting a “deal” with the President to pass a continuing resolution in exchange for a vote on a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment.
A vote.
Erick Erickson (with emphasis added by me):
The GOP is not telling the Democrats they actually want the Balanced Budget Amendment, just a vote. This is wholly unacceptable. If Barack Obama wants to increase the debt ceiling, the GOP should go all or nothing — they must have their Balanced Budget Amendment in exchange for it. A vote is utter nonsense without a commitment from the Democrats to pass it by a two-thirds vote from both Houses.
But it gets more insane from there. Everything we feared, everything we knew would happen, is coming to fruition.
Why?
Because you, the “Senate GOP Leadership”, the ones who’ve been there forever, fear another government shutdown. You remember – and have created a mid-level “leadership” that remembers – how badly the last shutdown cost you at the polls.
But that was in the cha-cha nineties, when things were generally awesome and the greatest crisis facing this nation was a lothario President, when the stock market was booming and people were generally fat ‘n happy, and the media was only too happy to tell them so.
But – I’ll emphasize this – it’s 2011 now. The Obama Recession is underway. A vast movement of Americans has had enough. They reversed the Obamascenscion and put your – our – party back in power twenty years earlier than anyone thought it would be possible in 2009. Because we are that pissed off! There is a blogosphere, and talk radio, and Fox News; the mainstream media don’t have the stage all to themselves. We can control our own narrative this time – if you are bold enough to seize the opportunity.
You, the “leadership”, apparently don’t get that. Erickson (again, emphasis added):
Why? Because the GOP is finally being forced by the base to push for actual, substantive spending cuts instead of the death by a thousand paper cuts strategy of the leadership…Luckily for us, conservatives made such a stink about the last short term CR being, in fact, the last short term CR, the GOP is now forced to be a leader. The leaders are, however, reluctant.
Look, it is very simple — demand passage of a balanced budget amendment, defund Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, and if the Democrats balk, shut the government down.
Unfortunately for you and me, the GOP leadership is scared to death of and hell bent on avoiding a government shutdown. They may have no choice, so they better get ready.
Look – here’s the deal; we sent you there to kick ass, and kick Ass. We sent you there to repeal Obamacare, to slash spending, to roll back tax hikes.
And we – the people who sent you to Washington in the greatest electoral turnaround in decades – are hungry for exactly that.
And if you don’t have the cojones to do the job, we will send someone to DC that does.
Cut the budget. Shut down the government if you need to. We’ll be there if you do. The situation is different than in the nineties; the media that covered the Democrats’ behinds back then doesn’t have a complete stranglehold now. So do it. Do what we sent you there to do.
And if you don’t? You can join your constituents on the unemployment line. Soon.
Do it.
That is all.
March 29th, 2011 at 11:24 am
I wish there was a way to legally (and effectively) flood their inboxes and fax buckets with this. They get so insulated by their layers of handlers and staffers that they never hear the common sense coming from flyover country.
March 29th, 2011 at 11:50 am
Careful, Berg. You might make John Boehner cry.
March 29th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
You’re not speaking plainly enough, Mitch. What our GOP brethren haven’t grasped yet is whether or not they compromise, or even appear to compromise – they will be villified. They are located at the intersection of Paradox and Martyrdom.
Just close the government down. If you do, you might accomplish something. If you don’t, they accuse you of wanting to do it anyway and the press and the dems (the ugly stepsisters of truth), will condemn you to hell for what you’re THINKING.
Might as well just do it. Make their jobs easy. We’re evil, we’re masochistic, we’re anti-government, we want anarchy and the smell of baby flesh in the morning.
They’re going to accuse us of all that and more – regardless.
March 29th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
I love the smell of baby flesh in the morning. It smells like…victory.