When John Boehner did the red faced eruption that he has become famous for, I found myself a bit concerned. The tone from Boehner was different than I had heard before. It was not as measured or contrived as some of his other rants tend to be. Not that he is not a fireball by nature, but age and wisdom seemed to insure a sense of organized anger before. When he went off on the Tea Party wing of the republicans, he sort of lost it.
Now, I understand that politics is more histrionics than genuine emotion. However, this represents something really big. Or nothing at all.
If this is nothing at all, it means that the mainstream republican has finally accepted that this all out war on Barack Obama is starting to look like Vietnam and Iraq all in one. War without an organized approach, with an elusive enemy, without a way of determining victory is an odd form of suicide. No damage you cause becomes worth the casualties you take. Republicans have taken major casualties (9% approval) for the war against Obama's legacy.
How do you destroy his legacy without risking the health of your constituents who ALL finally have full access to healthcare? Every path away from ObamaCare is more disruptive than ObamaCare which is why it was chosen in the first place. How do you work to solidify the American economy and deal with the largest growing ethnic minority in America while working to destroy Obama's legacy on Immigration? It was clear that hispanics (and women) put the icing on the cake for Obama's 2nd term election, so republicans have to move to cherry pick some of this demographic if they have any hope of winning back the white house. Tea lovin' Marco Rubio won't help republicans win the hispanic vote if they continue to obstruct an immigration bill that is ready to be passed and signed into law right now.
If the risk of being on the wrong side of healthcare and immigration isn't enough, republicans are threatening to actually go back down the damaging road called government shut down. It is a tactic that Boehner confessed they all agreed was futile before they proceeded to do it anyway. It was probably the key reason that Harry Reid went nuclear in destroying the power of the filibuster.
Amidst the nuclear fallout was a window of opportunity for everyone to win. Republicans who drink less Tea realized that another shutdown would get blamed on them....again, and no one with as low a polling number as congress should tempt fate with another shutdown of government. Given this reality, Murray and Ryan moved to save both parties from themselves with a temporary stop gap bill that runs out in two years. The phony concession that was made on military spending has been a tug-o-war rope for both sides to pretend to own lately. Republicans ask for more spending to maintain some fake physical presence abroad, while Democrats claim the need of more military spending for our wounded warriors in need of government support, even though our efforts never seem to honor the service they've rendered. Either way, neither side wanted to risk losing the military vote by getting on the wrong side of that voting block.
So the question becomes, is this the first sign of some really self destructive politics coming to an end, or has Boehner pissed off the ideological revolutionaries of his party and now an internal republican civil war must see its way to a conclusion? In other words, if the Tea party gives in on immigration and other objects of their obstructionism, than they may be risking their very existence as ideologs abroad would branch off into a new, deeper faction of the right wing? Compromise is not a well received behavior by Tea partiers even though it is the cornerstone of our representative republic so they should be true to their creed.
If the rift on the right doesn't give way to cooler heads, then it may be seen by history as the beginning of the end of the two party system.
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