The Big Fail

Jerry Moran? Who's Jerry Moran? It wouldn't be very surprising if even Kansans couldn't come up with the name of their Senator — but it was Moran, along with Mike Lee, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul who spared their fellow Republicans the jeopardy of voting on so-called "repeal and replace."  Here's how the New York Times counted the votes:

The "no" group consists of the four named above plus the forty-eight Democrats.  We can be sure that the "no" Republicans were personally selected by Mitch McConnell -- discipline is tight.  Collins is the party's token moderate; Paul and Lee can claim ideological purity and avoid being "primaried" from the right; but what about Jerry Moran?

Moran gained some cover by "teaming up" with Lee in announcing his opposition, and it well could be that fellow Kansans Charles and David Koch (who bankroll primary challenges from the right) preapproved Moran's "defection."  Be that as it may, somebody had to save those thirty-four "unclear" and "concerned" Republicans from the political damage they would have suffered by voting for an extraordinarily unpopular bill.

It's interesting that the three Republicans selected to prevent consideration of a straight repeal, with no replacement, were all women.  As Republicans know, women are allowed to have "soft spots" — they can be forgiven a failure to be unfailingly "tough" on the poor.

Enablers

Christie
Obviously Chris has abandoned all hope of continuing his political career, as signaled by his approval of a 27¢ per gallon gasoline tax increase for New Jersey.  Maybe Tr*mp will allow him to be a talking head on that new news network — albeit neither loyalty nor gratitude seem to figure much into Tr*mp's "temperament."

Giuliani
Rudy was a racist when he served as Mayor of New York City; but these days he's a louder racist.  It's cute how he's out there insisting Tr*mp is a "genius" who can fix the tax code because he's exploited it so well.  (Needless to say, Tr*mp's tax proposal would leave the outrageous breaks for commercial real estate developers intact.)

McConnell & Ryan
Mitch and Paul still seem to have difficulty gagging out support for "their" presidential candidate, but somehow they manage to do so no matter how embarrassing he becomes or how often he contradicts orthodox Republican policy.  Tr*mp may be inconsistent, but he sticks with cutting taxes on the rich — and that's what matters.

Cruz
I guess Ted has come to decide his wife must be ugly and his father really did help plan the assassination of JFK.  How else to explain his endorsement of Tr*mp?  Surely an individual of such high and noble ideals could not have succumbed to political pressure.

This v. That

McConnell v. Obama
Mitch McConnell did not have to announce that the Senate would not consider an Obama nomination to the Supreme Court.  If he didn't want an Obama candidate confirmed, he could have held hearings and had his party reject the appointment.  He's been doing that over and over with Obama appointments to the Court of Appeals.

I doubt that he acted without thinking, thereby inadvertently blowing up a political storm.  He wanted the public conflict, and he got it.  Presumably, he hopes it will motivate more Republicans to go to the polls in November, despite the fact that most of them will have supported candidates who lost in the primaries all the while developing a pretty intense dislike for the eventual winner.

Tim Cook v. FBI
FBI Director James Comey kept his agency's conflict with Tim Cook and Apple quiet for over a year, then decided to go public when he could exploit the San Bernadino shooting to force Apple to breach its customers' security.  Tr*mp isn't the only one exploiting fear to compromise civil liberties.

Don't blame Comey, though.  He's just the public face of the administration's ongoing effort to have easy and immediate access to all your personal data.  When it comes to violation of privacy and establishment of the national security state, Obama is second to none.

The Donald v. the Pope
Dissing the Pope will not do Tr*mp any damage at all.  Most of his redneck supporters probably hate Catholics anyway, and the Catholics among his supporters are pissed at Francis for "betraying" the virulently anti-Communist John Paul and Hitler Youth graduate Benedict; not to mention failing to lead the hate parade against Muslims and gays.

Me, I'm an atheist, but I'm still more of a Christian than Tr*mp.  Oh, well.  Except for Trump winning again, I expect the outcome of the South Carolina Republican primary to be largely inconclusive, so the merry chase will continue on towards Super Tuesday.

More on sequestration, yawn...

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who never fails to remind me of an elderly Foghorn Leghorn, has been crowing for a couple of days now.  Like a lot of other roosters, he doesn't restrict his crowing to the early morning hours, but keeps up the noise all day long.

Most recently, he's been going on about how how the sequester is no big deal, because it's just a tiny slice of the federal budget.  Yes, too bad it's kind of haphazard, but what the hell.  Budget's gotta be cut, ya know!

Personally, I don't at all mind the cuts to Defense although I feel sympathy for the people who might lose their jobs with defense contractors if the sequester goes on long enough.  The Department of Defense (they really should go back to calling it the Department of War) enters into contracts that typically last for years, and no existing contracts will be cancelled — not even for the most useless weapons systems the military doesn't even want.

Foghorn Leghorn is right in that we probably can survive the sequester, although it will further slow economic growth and prolong what for many people feels a hell of a lot like a depression.  The main hope I see for easing the gridlock in Washington is, believe it or not, Karl Rove.  Rove has mounted a new campaign to push Tea Party wack jobs out of the Republican Party, and replace them with ordinary conservatives.

We'll see how successful he is in 2014.

More Debt Ceiling Crap

Have you ever watched a game of chicken? Some of us geezers automatically think of the one in that James Dean movie, Rebel Without a Cause. In the case of the debt ceiling, though, two cars driving side by side towards a cliff really isn't the right metaphor. To me, two cars driving on a collision course down a single lane road with brick walls to each side seemed more apropos. It isn't possible for just one of them to step on the brakes and bail out. Either both chicken out or both wipe out.

Then along came that canny little bastard, Mitch McConnell, with a neat idea for creating an exit ramp for the Republicans — a ramp that would allow the Republicans to duck out of the way while Obama drives the country off a cliff and ensures a Republican victory in 2012. There's just one little problem with the McConnell plan.

What if there's no cliff? The Republicans would have chickened out, the economy wouldn't be significantly crappier (albeit still quite crappy), and Obama probably could go on to win another term. Nobody actually knows what a second Obama term would look like, but I'm not betting on a great flowering of liberalism. I figure it will be the same corporatist crap, just minus the worst of the supply side bullshit.

If both parties still are obeying their corporate overlords, McConnell's plan is likely to be the one that flies. It will take a few days for House Republicans to figure out which of them can get away with voting for it and which of them get to beat their chests and vote "no," but it can pass. (Expect, of course, a very close vote.)

Those of us old enough to remember the James Dean movie cannot help but feel a bit cynical. It's only to be expected.