By Scott Williams
Communications Director, 5th District Democrats
It was one helluva weekend for nonsense.
While much of America was busy watching basketball playoffs or enjoying early spring, the Republican Party was busy laying the groundwork on two of the biggest battles coming up next week in Washington, D.C. – guns and the federal budget.
And they used their tired old tactic of refusing to move an inch on anything with Obama’s name on it. Over the past four years it has been called “obstructionism.” I call it nonsense.
- Try to make sense of this: Americans overwhelmingly support some controls on guns. But Senate Republicans, led by chief instigator Rand Paul, said on Saturday they plan to use their favorite tool, the filibuster, to stop any controls whatsoever. Nonsense!
- Try to make sense of this: Americans overwhelmingly want to keep Social Security and Medicare. But President Obama, in a compromise he called less than “ideal,” on Friday offered another olive branch to Republicans on the federal budget, something he already did six months ago. He offered to make changes to Social Security and other entitlement programs, which Republicans have insisted upon and lefties oppose. In exchange, the President wants tax increases on the rich. The GOP response? Its top troublemaker in the House, John Boehner, immediately rejected it. Nonsense!
- Try to make sense of this: On Thursday, Republicans in the Senate said they would oppose a U.N. treaty to regulate the multi-billion-dollar international arms trade – a treaty opposed only by Iran, Syria and North Korea. Their reason? It might impose new gun controls in the U.S. Nonsense! (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/04/maddow-senate-gop-joins-north-korea-and-iran-in-opposition-to-un-arms-treaty/).
We should be used to this by now. It’s not like these kinds of antics are unexpected from the GOP, which will use any tactic imaginable to stop anything the president proposes. But I’m flat-out exhausted by their nonsense. How can this country move forward at all if Republicans refuse to do anything? It’s a broken record played by a broken party.
A few Republicans tried to keep the peace, in their own way. John McCain suggested that Rand Paul’s antics were, indeed, way off base. On gun controls, he said “What are we afraid of….Have a debate.” And a key GOP senator, Lindsay Graham, threw a wrench into the budget machinery, saying a third issue – immigration – has to come first. He told NBC Meet the Press on Sunday that the key to any “grand bargain” on the budget is solving immigration first. That might lay the groundwork for compromise. (http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/07/17641103-graham-sees-immigration-deal-as-prelude-to-budget-grand-bargain?lite ).
Rand Paul and his ultra-conservative cronies have a twisted mindset – something akin to a sickness called Road Rage. Or, perhaps more accurately, to the mind of a child who throws a tantrum if he doesn’t get his way. Isn’t it Boehner who cries whenever he gets upset? As comedian Bill Maher puts it, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are “intellectually stuck in their teen years.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/06/bill-maher-libertarianism-paul-ryan-rand-paul-video_n_3028244.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics ).
Many have said that Obama needs to get tough. Stop the compromising. Bring out Teddy Roosevelt’s “Big Stick.”
I say let’s sit back and watch. Obama dropped his budget late on a Friday afternoon – near the end of a news cycle – for a reason. This is the first round. It’s as if he’s saying, “Let the GOP chew on this for a while. Then let’s get serious.”
I predict that there’s another round coming. What will Obama do next? That’s hard to say. But Obama, like the rest of us, knows he won the last election hands down. That’s a pretty big stick, all by itself.
If he doesn’t come up with something better, he will be left with a legacy that few presidents could live with. He will be known as the “president who could not govern.”
