Reading an article in yesterday’s New York Times by Sam Tanenhaus (The Benefits of Intransigence – NYTimes.com) after publishing my last post a few minutes ago about the impasse in Washington, I had a moment of clarity. It ties into my central argument of my previous post, that we must let majority rule and democracy work and stop pandering to this Tea Party Anarchy.
As Tenenhaus points out, these radical Tea Partiers are game changers, or at least want to be. They refuse to accept the central rules of our political system, based on consensus politics, compromise, and majority rule. Their rules are to take no prisoners, accept nothing less than total victory, imposing their will on the country because they know better than the people what the people need.
Reminds me of the rules of a dictatorship by committee. You have to admire their dedication, their discipline, and their organization. They took Speaker Boehner and his leadship by surprise and then convinced Boehner that it was in his best interests to support them, even against the majority of his Republican Conference and certainly against the majority of the House. The threat of deposing Speaker Boeher, Majority Leader Cantor, and Majority Whip McCarthy was sufficient to gain the leadership’s support.
As I said in my last post, Boehner has shown his lack of political courage and his craven desire to continue as Speaker at any cost to him, his integrity, and to the country. So Boehner agreed to apply the Hastert Rule to the budget continuing resolution, and here we are. This crisis is patently the responsibility of Boehner and his leadship team, a mediocre bunch of politicians with no backbone and no commitment to our democratic system.
It appears that President Obama and his White House Staff finally woke up to the true nature of this threat to our democracy and they have refused so far to negotiate with this group of anarchists, for any negotiation based on a demand for total capitulation by the other side would be a futile exercise and a waste of time. It appears that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caught on to this menace before the President and we have him to thank for the Senate’s standing up to the total victory goals of the Tea Party Anarchists.
The only solution as I see it is for the entire Congress (excluding the Tea Party Anarchists and Senators Cruz and Lee) to recognize this action of the Tea Party Kamikaze squad for what it is, an attempt by this group using dictatorial and extra-legal, extra-constitutional means to impose their will on the majority of Congress and on the American People.
The solution is simple and falls within the parameters of the constitutional structure set up by our Founding Fathers. The House Leadership must set aside the Hastert rule not just for this situation, but forever, and submit the clean continuing resolution and the increase in the debt limit to a majority vote NOW, today or tomorrow, before our government is further damaged and compromised and before more people are hurt and more millions of dollars are wasted in this futile and totally useless closure of our government.
We must let democracy do its work and we must trust in the wisdom of majority rule. Hopefully after resolving these two immediate crises the Republican leadership in the House and Senate will understand the urgent need to enter into a real negotiation to arrive at a political solution, a political compromise that will allow our government to function without having to face recurring political crises every three months.
If the solution negotiated is not satisfactory to one side or the other, there’s always the elections in 2014 and 2016, when there will be ample opportunity to make their case to the American people and try to gain sufficient power in the Congress to change what they feel they must change. But using democratic means and constitutionally-santioned methods, and respecting the rule of the majority.
This is not a crisis of our constitutional system, this is a crass failure of the Republican leadership in the House to live up to the ideals of our democracy and of our founding fathers.
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Reflections on our Times 