Republicans have a unique and undisguised strategy to freeze the 113th Congress. It’s a one-card deck. And that card is the race card played incessantly 24/7, every operative day of the legislative year and every day Congress is not in session. The card is directed at the black man in the White House, Barack Obama. This is not news. You’ve seen it in my prior writings and from pundits throughout the progressive universe.
It goes something like this. The red neck and power tie consortium of backward, hateful whites and the greedy billionaire tax cheat power mongers, who politically play the former for all their worth at the polls, are dedicated to setting the stage to completely castrate the Obama administration. This unholy duo is bent on accomplishing this abominable goal to the extent that the history books will dismiss Obama’s two terms as economically ineffective, devoid of accomplishments and exercises in futility. And please don’t be so naïve as to think these attacks are aimed at just Barack. The true purpose is to guarantee that no black man or woman will ever again see the light of the Oval Office.
In short, we’re fighting a political domestic war every bit as fiercely as the Civil War. From 1861-1864 an estimated 600,000 people died because one side of the conflict wanted to continue to own and control the roughly 4 million slaves as counted in1860, about the same percentage of the population that blacks represent today. That side called itself “The Confederate States of America.” Ironic, insofar as 7 Southern states had just seceded from “America” with 4 more on the cusp. Lest we go too nuts over iconic Republican President Lincoln, you’ll remember that he was content to let the South keep their slaves, he was just pissed that they seceded.
The current hostilities that I choose to call the “Uncivil War” reflect every bit as much of a war in dimension and intensity as the original War Between the States except the current war well exceeds that accursed blot on our history in body count. No, there aren’t 600,000 physically dead casualties; there are untold millions of “dead” hopes, dreams, aspirations, opportunities and fair play, frosted with a deep-seated race hatred that in some corners of our nation hasn’t changed one iota since the 1860s, the 13th Amendment notwithstanding.
The social slaves of the new millennium are the poor and undereducated, most minorities, gays and a surprising number of repressed women. These are the groups that the South and some bandwagon haters from other parts of the country are fighting to keep repressed through the New Uncivil War assuring that these “slaves” will have no meaningful input into society and no identifiable futures.
In the war context, let’s do a little between-the-lines reading of the latest overtures on the upcoming raising of the Debt Ceiling deadline and the partial government shutdown. On the surface the Senate seems to playing nice in talks primarily between Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “We’ve made tremendous progress,” Reid declared after Monday confabs covering a range of debt ceiling and partial shutdown issues. McConnell allowed as to how tomorrow will be a bright day. Here’s what the boys and their political henchmen are apparently fiddling around with. First of all, you knew some dimension of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be on the table.
By the way, no more Obamacare, just ACA. Seems polls asking questions about ACA are invariably positive toward the act, while the very mention of “Obamacare” causes the numbers to plummet. So for my progressive submission to PoliticusUSA, it’s ACA from now on. But I digress. To get the Senate to agree to raise the debt limit above it’s present $16.7 trillion figure until at least mid-February, 2014, Democrats must allow a one-year delay in the $63 fee imposed on companies per employee covered by ACA. Also included in the deal, agencies could be ‘flexible’ in adjusting to cuts in their funding. No more money, mind you, just who to screw out of services.
Another political tumble weed making its way down Capitol Hill, is a requirement that people needing subsidies to help fund their health care coverage would be subject to stronger income verification, thereby, at the very least, delaying the process. Typical Republican hate and distrust of the poor. Uncivil war!
The only reason Republicans are talking at all is that polls are exposing them as doing great harm to the country. At this point things look mildly promising in the Senate. But Congress is like Catwoman and The Joker. Catwoman operates in the Senate, subtly and with great stealth, even taking an occasional foray to the other side, while the Joker is viciousness and evil incarnate behind his clownish grin. The House of Representatives is the Joker and the Joker is resplendent in Tea Party garb.
The Tea Party wants to use the sequestration, debt ceiling and partial shutdown to destroy the ACA (not to mention the federal government). Little Democratic concession nibbles at the corners aren’t enough. Anything less than defunding ACA represents a loss to the TP’ers. On the other hand, troublesome polls, 350,000 furloughed fed workers and countless private sector workers plus their extended families, pulling back veterans benefits and forcing states to spend their own money on favorite projects and an imminent Democratic win in the Virginia governor’s race could change a lot of minds.
We’ll see where the real power lies here. Party Chairman Reince Priebus packs the requisite hate for our president, but he doesn’t seem to hold his own party in much regard either, characterizing its 2012 platform as “horrific and racist.” There appears to be little individual power within the House itself. John Boehner is terrified of the Tea Party, Paul Ryan lost his mojo along with the Vice-Presidency in 2012. Eric Cantor has been largely silent and Darrell Issa is too busy with dead-end investigations. There are no identifiable outside Republicans possessed of the respect and record that would seem capable of leading the current House to reasonable positions. The elder Bush is too old; his ex-president son is a non-entity; Jeb Bush is trying to keep a low profile as he lusts for the presidency and travels the country organizing counties for a 2016 effort. Palin has been reduced to a Kardashian-like figure making appearances at silly events.
That leaves The Koch brothers or some billionaire you’ve never heard of. They may order a strategic retreat that will appear to be a Democratic victory, but is, in reality, merely a regrouping for a new plan of attack.
So, we might squeeze out some kind of limited, near-term agreement for the reasons mentioned, but the attack on the president and the ACA will escalate for years to come.
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