Republicans behaving like children

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

After watching the evening news last night, I could not agree more with Hunter at Daily Kos: We are governed by children:

Today seems like one of those days intentionally designed to sap whatever faith you might have had left in politics. You did have some remaining faith, right? Just a bit? Well hand it over, because forget jobs, forget healthcare, forget the very scary deficit monster and everything else—we'll be lucky if the members or wanna-be members of our government can even agree to meet with each other.

First we had Sarah Palin in some sort of low-intensity fight over whether Christine O'Donnell would even be allowed to be at the same Tea Party event as her, which has so far resulted in O'Donnell being invited, uninvited, re-invited, and re-uninvited. Palin has a history of canceling on people, so the final joke might be on the Tea Party, if it turns out that neither of them show up.

But that was just the appetizer: the main event was in Washington, where John Boehner apparently rejected (you can do that?) a request by President Obama to give a speech to a joint session of Congress on the first day Congress is to return from its August recess. There's also a Republican debate later that evening, and we just can't have both of those things on the same day Congress comes back to class. Now, I'm not entirely sure, but I thought that at best only two or three dozen House Republicans were going to be in that presidential debate, and I'm sure the business of Congress could go on without them, right? So I'm failing to see the problem.

As an added bonus, Boehner's office knew about Obama's planned date ahead of time, but waited until after the White House publicly announced it before they rejected it. So how many times does this make it that John Boehner has said one thing to the White House, only to very publicly say the opposite later? I'm no expert on political negotiations, but it seems at some point perhaps the administration might start thinking that this Boehner fellow might be a wee bit untrustworthy.

As an added added bonus, official Senate crank Jim DeMint (R-Whaddagot?) promised he'd block Obama's proposed date in the Senate (you can do that? Really??) because he would rather watch the Republican debate than see the President giving a speech.

So I am not sure if we're currently at 'tragedy' or have moved on to 'farce'. Yes, I suppose it was rude of Obama to want to start talking about jobs the very first day Congress returned from recess. It's like a teacher assigning homework on the first day of the school year. No fair! The first day is supposed to be easy! And I suppose it was doubly rude of Obama to want to give a speech about jobs on the same night that something good was on television, which I think right there is a perfect microcosm of just how degraded our politics have become.

We have moved on to farce.