Politico reported after Obama’s 2012 victory that “30-year-old old think tanker and writer Ben Domenech” observed how “The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality.” Of course, a key purveyor of that on-demand reality is, along with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and – the Drudge Report.
So when reality becomes too much for them to process, as when Speaker of the House John Boehner made a deal with Democrats to pass the government funding bill after Republicans got complete control of Congress, meaning they couldn’t possibly ever have to compromise again and could dictate that on-demand reality to the nation’s first black president, well….
We weren’t supposed to have a functioning government going into 2015. This was supposed to be Cruz Shutdown Part Deux. Yet, as we reported here, Democrats Score Major Win For Obama Nominees While Passing Government Funding Bill, 56-40.
Cognitive dissonance warning.
Republicans, who hate a functioning government unless it’s their government, saw it as a major Democrat win too, with Sarah Palin accusing Boehner of “carrying Obama’s water.”
Complaining that the bill doesn’t “include language prohibiting the administration from continuing to enforce the regulations it issued under Obamacare requiring almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide co-pay free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs,” CNS News claimed it “permits the administration to use money from the Treasury to enforce this regulation that forces Christians into complicity in the taking of innocent unborn human lives.”
Matt Drudge went one further, or at least one step lower, tweeting on Friday,
Obama got EVERYTHING. NSA dirt on Boehner must be incredible. Chicago wins. pic.twitter.com/Pl4HW9qGtb
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) December 12, 2014
Which led – inevitably – to World Net Daily to asking on Sunday,
IS OBAMA BLACKMAILING BOEHNER?
“Why is Boehner enabling Obama after Republicans won more seats in the House and took control of the Senate?” WND asks. “Is it blackmail, as Drudge suggests?”
Stay tuned for the film available from the WND store, including a free ticket for the rapture.
Right. Here’s the thing:
It’s not even possible that Boehner can’t control his own caucus and faced by rabid right-wing extremist in his own ranks, had to turn to Democrats for help. You know, people from a sane caucus.
That can’t possibly be the answer (even though it is) so it must be that Obama blackmailed Boehner.
After the big headline, WND didn’t have any evidence beyond Drudge’s suggestive tweet and was left salivating instead over a promised HuffPo “bombshell exposé” dating from 2010 on Boehner and lobbyist Lisbeth Lyons.
When reality gets to be too much for you, go to the deus ex machine and watch the hated Boehner disappear in a puff of scandal.
I don’t like Boehner but I would imagine if there were anything to the rumors, Drudge or Fox News would have invented something by now.
And here’s the other thing (and going back to reality here): By no means did all Democrats support the deal. Notable exceptions include Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Al Franken. Even President Obama had reservations, telling reporters Friday,
This by definition was a compromise bill. This is what is produced when you have a divided government that the American people voted. Had I been able to draft my own legislation, get it passed without any Republican votes, I suspect it would be slightly different.
That is not the circumstance we find ourselves in and I think what the American people very much are looking for is responsible governance and the willingness to compromise, and that’s what we’ve clearly done.
Drudge claims Obama got everything he wanted even though he didn’t, and even though Warren denounced the bill in the strongest possible terms, saying the bill was a giveaway “for the rich and powerful” and was “literally written by Citigroup lobbyists.”
Boehner has become a walking Shakespearean tragedy in three acts, reviled on all sides, and his new $835,000 condo on Florida’s ritzy Marco Island must look increasingly attractive. There he can enjoy stunning views of rising sea levels while contemplating the fruits of corruption and his Keystone XL profits.
The rest of us, meanwhile, will soldier on, hoping simply for a functioning government in the face of unrelenting Republican obstruction. Gallup reports this morning that approval of Congress “near all-time low,” just one percentage point above last year’s record-setting low of 14 percent.
It’s safe to conclude, I think, that 2013’s record will be threatened in the coming year, and I hate to say this, but exiling Boehner to Florida isn’t going to help.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson’s new novel, Wolf Rising, is now available here on Amazon Kindle
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