"...the difference between stomach upset and galloping Ebola."

[babylonsister]

Last edited Wed Oct 9, 2013, 07:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Ex-GOP insider unloads: Blame “neo-Confederate insurrectionists” for shutdown!
"I would take Boehner drunk over Cruz sober," former 28-year GOP staffer-turned-author Mike Lofgren tells Salon
By Josh Eidelson


The government shutdown, and the prospect of an unprecedented debt default, have sparked a new wave of debate about whether the system of government set forth in the Constitution is equipped to handle the tactics taken up by the modern GOP. Salon spoke Friday with Mike Lofgren, who worked as a Republican congressional staffer from 1983 to 2011 (including 16 years as a senior analyst on the budget Committees of the Senate and House) before leaving and writing the best-seller “The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.”

We discussed the last government shutdown (“terrible”), the current GOP (“neo-Confederate insurrectionists”) and how this showdown could end. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.

So in the lead-up to the shutdown and the way it’s played out so far, what if anything has surprised you?

Nothing. Of course the media is kind of covering it like the Michigan-Ohio State game, and love anything with a countdown clock or supposed suspense and all this other crap, and the easy visuals of some park service guy putting up a sawhorse at the Jefferson Memorial. None of that surprised me. {But} this is not something happening according to exigent circumstances or happenstance. This is something that the GOP wanted.

And I’ll say this: I am not an Obama partisan. I have many bones to pick with him, including the healthcare bill. If your intent was to insure as many people as possible, you’d have single payer. You also wouldn’t pay off big Pharma and the insurance companies. That said, the difference between what Obama and the Republicans are doing is like the difference between stomach upset and galloping Ebola.

These people are basically neo-Confederate insurrectionists. They are in substantive rebellion against the orderly government of the country. And one of the things I noticed — and it’s something that’s very common in human beings — we all try to mollify or appease the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. You know, “Don’t make a scene.” Well, I noticed in the last few years of my service on the Hill that a number of Democrats seemed to be afraid of Republicans. And Obama pretty much wasted his first term trying to mollify them. I think he’s finally stumbled upon a strategy that’s better: simply not give them what they demand. Because this is a deliberate strategy to hold the government hostage.


more...

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/08/ex_gop_insider_unloads_blame_neo_confederate_insurrectionists_for_shutdown/

[JI7]

1. except Boehner is too busy drinking and being drunk to stand up to the teabaggers

he just drinks and cries .