It seems especially ridiculous that those Republicans (like Sen. Ted Cruz) who repeatedly make the unsubstantiated claim that the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) is a “job killer” are willing to drive the whole economy off a cliff through their tactic of threatening to allow the U.S. government to default on its loans if their list of demands is not met.
It is widely understood that such an occurrence would cause such a trauma to the economy that there would be a hemorrhaging of jobs rivaling if not surpassing the “Great Recession,” the effects of which we have still not shaken off. It is reminiscent of that clichéd scene we have seen in so many cheezy “B” movies — they have their hand on the explosive plunger saying if they don’t get their way we all blow up.
To call them reckless is an understatement. It is pretty obvious their interest is not in preserving jobs, but rather in preserving the current stranglehold that powerful oligarchies have on this country (and on Congress) — in this case the insurance industry. How many have already lost their livelihoods in bankruptcies because of medical conditions? What do Republicans propose to do about that?
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Doesn’t matter that the bottle is half empty
if you can still skim off the cream.
Theft of terms Republican and Conservative
Just because someone can organize a group of people and takeover an organization neither means word definitions are redefined nor that they represent the vast majority of members. The actions are not “Republican.” They are factionalism.
Is Tea Party-ism ‘conservative’? By Eric Black | 10/03/13 touches on that.
Republicans (or any other party’s members) are by definition those persons who consider themselves such and vote such. Members are not only those who are active in politics. That someone captures the leadership and even redefines bylaws no-one else bothers with does not make them the organization’s body. In general such tactics fail anywhere in attempting to force voluntary organization “members” into leaders’ molds. Republicans when founded were the “liberals”/”progressives” of their day, not the Democrats. The Republican Party then spent the next century as slightly right moderates – until Reagan “conservatism” captured the flag. All polls and voting statistics I’ve seen substantiate the moderate right as the current membership. In fact that would be Reagan himself, not the Tea Party and Libertarian imposed current definitions.
Those essentially 80 fanatics holding up the rest of the Republican Party House majority should not be viewed as “the Republicans.” But to break it will take the will of enough of the other 152 to form a 218 vote coalition with the majority of Democrats. The big money donors benefiting most from modern congressional action will likely stop supporting and maybe donate to TP opponents to those “turncoat” ordinary Republicans in the next election. It takes courage to vote knowing you may never return again because big PAC and McCutcheon money will smear your reelection bid.