Wow.
I can't possibly disagree more, richb. Not that we don't have more than a few reasons to do the full on eeyore.
We do.
I mean, we need only look as close as the GOP leadership and its obstinate death wish to cling to repeatedly proven losing strategies to see more fail on the horizon.
The thing is, though...we have a secret weapon and that weapon is DumbassCare. We still can't run on nothing but all we have to do is say that we want to repeal the damned thing and that should do it. Anything else (and I do mean practically anything) is gravy. And that's because going into 2014 and most certainly by 2016 the voting public is going to be ready for anything at all that 1) gets rid of DumbassCare and 2) isn't DumbassCare.
The Democrats own this.
And I do believe that it is a serious mistake to pay more than lip service to "fixing" it. Fixing DumbassCare should be a political move only with no actual results. The GOP needs to be seen as sympathetic to the idea of reducing or eliminating the pain but that's as far as it should go. DumbassCare is a solely owned subsidiary of the Democrat party, it's radioactive and they should be saddled with it for all of eternity.
And it's not going to get better. It is going to get worse. A lot worse. It can't be fixed and if the Democrats ever get to the point where they cry, "uncle" and decide to repeal it themselves even that won't make things better. I stand by my claim that we (as a nation) are in uncharted territory now and that no one knows where this will go or where it will end up. The only thing that can be said is that there will be damage done all along the way. It is inevitable.
If you could snap your fingers and magically make things suddenly go as well as possible for the Democrats to extricate themselves from the tar baby it would go like this: Tomorrow the president comes clean, apologizes profusely and sincerely for everything and resigns from office with the one parting admonition to his party that they repeal it immediately. Then president Biden leads the Democrats (and House GOP) to repeal it immediately with the urgency, speed and bipartisanship we saw put into the Patriot Act after 9/11. And then they somehow bail out the insurance companies that they have screwed over and assume all responsibility for those new policy holders that, in a normal insurance world, are uninsurable under any circumstances. They also assume any and all responsibility for anyone left in the lurch due to forced DumbassCare policy cancellations.
But that's a fantasy that will never happen. O'Bongo is not going to sincerely apologize, not ever. O'Bongo is not going to resign, not ever. And he will never, ever allow a repeal bill of any kind to get anything other than a veto. Same for any other bill that would damage if not outright kill his signature (and singular) achievement as president, not ever. This guy has a monumental ego. He has a colossal ego. He has an ego worthy of a demi-god. He has been told all of his life how wonderful he is and he believes it. This is the the country's first affirmative action president and that's that. We are stuck with him and so are the Democrats.
So there isn't going to be a fix. Not until O'Bongo is out of office. Or until the GOP has enough votes in congress to get a veto proof bill passed. And that could happen. It would be the most judicious irony of all if the final two years of King O'Bongo's second term were the polar opposite of the first two years of his first term with a super majority of GOP members running the country through the congress over top of the president. I know that that, too, is fantasy but I do not believe that the midterms are going to be bad for the GOP. I think that they are going to be pretty good despite any BS GOP civil war.
The voters are going to be blaming everything on O'Bongo and the Democrats for a very long time. And that's not a fantasy. Ironic, yes, after GWB getting the blame for everything for the last five years but it will happen. We are seeing it begin to happen right now with O'Bongo's plunging poll numbers. His polling numbers aren't going to come back any more than Carter's did. It just isn't going to happen. The guy is now a punch line and soon he will be a punching bag. His own party is going to run against him and not because they want to but because they will have to. It will be non-negotiable. Mandatory.
No, I think that the GOP is going to come out of this okay. In spite of itself. And the only thing that it needs to advance is new leadership. I don't know who or when but if it does happen there won't be a damned thing that will be able to stop it. After several years of DumbassCare devastation it will be impossible to stop it.
That's the way that I would like to see things go, anyway.
Not that the whole stinking economy and country won't plunge into the abyss, though. I think that's inevitable, too. But I think that Democrats and liberals will be so politically radioactive that maybe we have a chance at having some sane people in charge when we need them most. And that's not unprecedented, either. Remember: We could have had Algore running the country when islamists attacked and we didn't.