If you read the news last week, you may have thought you had been transported into an episode of “House of Cards.” When World War II veterans decided to visit their memorial, closed by the shutdown, the party arrived — the Tea Party, that is.
A handful of Republicans descended upon the memorial and displayed their best vaudevillian fanfare, preaching the detriments of Obamacare and using the 80- and 90-year-old veterans as political tools to shame Democrats. With this kind of stunt, it’s clear that our elected officials are more prone to spend an afternoon making the press swoon than they are to work and pass a resolution to fund the government.
The crowd on Tuesday included ultra-conservative stalwarts Michele Bachman and John Carter, two of the right-of-right Republicans who have helped reduce their party to ridicule. They defiantly pushed away the barricades, to the delight of reporters, and even stopped to argue with one or two hecklers.
The episode was a press field day and the story appeared on news outlets around the world, but few asked exactly why they were there in the first place. Indeed, the veterans had plenty of able-bodied helpers to move the barricades aside.
Politicians clamored for pictures and even wrestled to speak with veterans about the horrors of socialized medicine and the Obama-induced government shutdown. The veterans just wanted access to their memorial, which they certainly deserve.
Then, as if it couldn’t get better, RNC chairman Reince Priebus arrived and pledged party money to pay for security for the monument so that the veterans could enjoy the fruit of their sacrifice.
It seems as though Washington has gone from a media circus to an actual circus.
The Republicans continue to blame Democrats for the shutdown, while the 35 to 44 percent of the country blames the GOP, according to CBS News.
I suppose the leftover 21 percent blame themselves for voting at all.
But Republicans aren’t solely responsible.
Across the aisle, Senate Democrats shout from press conferences that they will not compromise on Obamacare. The president maintains his position that it was passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. He will not delay or alter his own law.
But how can the president expect to take a no compromise line on a law passed unilaterally by Democrats?
The Republican house is doing just what they were elected to do: destroy Obamacare and satisfy their strongly conservative districts. So when Harry Reid lobs personal insults at John Boehner for shutting down the government, he is just acting his part in the theater that has become the U.S. Capitol. He knows that Tea Party Republicans are masquerading for a reason, so why don’t he and Boehner sit down and talk things out?
I’m not sure there’s a legitimate answer to that.
The real question is on how far we will have to go before it becomes disastrous. Most agree that if the two parties cannot come together before the default deadline on October 17, our country will slip back into recession. As college students that means we’ll have less money to pay tuition, which we have to pay regardless of the government’s functionality.
But if you heard the president and Democratic lawmakers, you would think that October 17 marked the apocalypse.
According to CBS, 72 percent of Americans disapprove of the shutdown. So what’s stopping Congress from representing the majority and coming to a compromise? Well, the shrieking minority’s power has become so inflated that they’ve managed to shut down the government.
Because of this, Americans have lost faith in their legislature, a fact appreciated, at least, by Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) who spoke to POLITICO Thursday.
“It’s not like we can make it worse,” he said. “It’s not like they liked us before we started all this.”