So
OffHisMeds is reading his newspaper a few days ago after an extended absence from home on a travelling work assignment, and is assaulted by a variety of post-election articles, editorials and opinion pieces all touting "Republican Obstructionism" and the importance of "bi-partisan cooperation" on deficit reduction, nuclear disarmament treaties and any number of other of the critical issues of our day. Or at least as those issues are defined by the Democrat Party and Barack Obama on the occasion of getting their asses kicked in the mid-term elections, and their prospects for recovering in time for the elections in 2012.
It's an axiom that the best Defense is a good Offense, so you can't fault the
Dems for spinning their defeat by continuing to fault Republicans for all of their failures whilst simultaneously demanding bi-partisanship from Republicans. What is incomprehensible is the number of Useful Idiots in the Republican Party that provide them political cover. Co-opting a significant percentage of Republican turn-coats has been a staple of their political strategy for three generations now and a win-win-win for
Dems: they appear reasonable and progressively dumb down the
public's perception of their truly despicable policies; they retain control of the agenda; they continue to define Republicans as obstructionist until the next election cycle; and they stiff the
Repubs' efforts for any substantive change. This is all so obvious as to hardly be worth stating, which is why the thing that struck OHM about the expansion of the Obama agenda in the face of the Tea Party revolution was the number of prominent Republicans who jumped on board before, during and even after the thrashing
Dems took at the polls just one month ago.
Which brings us to
Obama's Deficit Reduction Commission, co-chaired by Respected Fossils Erskine
Bowles (former Clinton chief of staff) and Alan Simpson (former
Repub senator and Clinton persecutor). They came out Dec. 3rd with their report and recommendations on reducing the national deficit, and to
nobody's surprise it's long on tax increases and short on actual spending cuts, with implementation of even the modest cuts they recommend structured in such a way that future congresses can ignore them without consequence.
In other words, we're screwed once again, and once again,
Repubs have their fingerprints all over the process, lending it the very "bi-partisan" support so essential to Democrats so that they can continue to steal with both hands, buy a few more election cycles, further accelerate the destruction of America - or at least any reasonable ideal of what it's supposed to be, and still blame Republicans for the mess.
Should anybody be surprised by the outcome of the Deficit Reduction Commission? Just consider that
Bowles and Simpson share so ever-much more in common than they have differences. Both are the sons of prominent politicians, both are frat boys, both managed "low risk" military service, and both are life-long
sucklers at the Public Teat - either directly as
gummint employees or nursing for extended periods of time in the capacity of college professor, as members of one or another public sector foundations and similar make-work endeavors. Even their so-called private sector jobs all reek of the privileges bestowed by powerful fathers who grease the skids for their upward trajectory and by government on the special few who carry Establishment water.
Now,
Bowles we can understand. He's not diverging from the Dem Party line a whit by being where he is and saying the things he says. Simpson is another matter, as are the dozens of
Repub Establishment types making favorable noises about the content of
Obama's Deficit Reduction Plan, such as Sen Judd Gregg (R-N. Hampshire) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas).
Couldn't find out what Mitch "Earmarks" O'Connell thinks of the report, which is ominous in its own right. As the Tea Parties have shown us, any
Repub politician that isn't shouting his concerns from the rooftop is - with virtually no exceptions - going to turn out to be a triangulating, back-stabbing son of a bitch, angling for his place at the Dem's table in his post-electoral career, and his fair piece of the Goodies Bag reserved for Republican Turncoats, including but not limited to appointment to some future Commission that advances the Democrat's agenda.
The fact that this sad cycle of "Democrats Spend, Republicans Enable, Economy Tanks and Media demands Bi-Partisan cooperation when the wheels come off" is lost on so many
Repubs is all the more a confirmation to
OffHisMeds that Republican Establishment types are indistinguishable from Democrats, and share the same view of conservative Republicans and Tea
Partiers as their Dem counterparts.
Alan Simpson provided a telling validation of this point when he proclaimed that, with the Commission's Debt Reduction Plan: "we took a big banana and threw it into the gorilla cage, and the gorilla has picked it up; they'll peel it, mash it, play with it, but they will eat some". Given the results of the recent elections, it's clear that the "Gorilla" that Simpson is referring to is Congressional Republicans. His regard for the people that currently occupy the job he once had notwithstanding, if Simpson had ever visited a zoo, he would know that Gorillas routinely and even enthusiastically eat their own shit, usually catching the steamy turds directly out of their
buttholes and gobbling them down with relish. I wonder if he of all people would appreciate the irony of Congressmen - himself included - being forced to eat their own crap, inclusive as that is of virtually all of the legislative output of the modern Democrat Party, not to mention the so-called "bipartisan" commissions that Democrats so love and inclusive - with a tiring regularity - of Republican turncoats and intellectual and moral lightweights like himself?
It's all of a piece. Guys like this desire a place at the table. They've done the math and concluded - correctly - that Dem's have controlled access to the power, influence and wealth of this nation for the last 75 years and likely will continue to do so. They have also concluded that they can act this way within their own party and not pay any price for it, and in so doing they have contorted any notions of principled opposition by Republicans to fit the Dem's definition, with themselves as the beneficiaries.
OHM realizes he is in the minority in regarding the beloved
Simpson as a person with all the character - not to mention nutritional value - of Gorilla
Dookie, but he does not hold this opinion without reason. Recall that the first and only time Simpson made an impression nationally prior to this was almost twenty years ago as one of handful of grandstanding politicians who enthusiastically dragged the Clinton impeachment out for years. During one of the innumerable hearings, Simpson was accusing Clinton and his associates of various improprieties and dramatically pulled a sheaf of papers out of his coat pocket that he claimed proved it. The papers were bogus, and Simpson was quickly exposed for the fraud. With that stunt, he seriously compromised Republican efforts to pursue the various and credibly documented crimes that Clinton probably did commit, and Clinton got off essentially
scot-free.
Strange to think that Simpson himself survived what was essentially an impeachable offense to some decades later co-chair a committee with Erskine
Bowles, Clinton's former chief of staff. Draw of that what conclusions you will, but with that incident and his most recent sellout of Conservatives as bookends, Simpson maintains his lifelong practice of enabling Democrats, and handing America the "offal" results.
