When the tea party first rose its head a couple of summers ago, we were told they were all about ‘getting our fiscal house in order.’ Many proposed draconian, drastic cuts, others trooped around in three cornered hats and did the fife and drums thing. What was not said was that they were also the social conservatives, the radical Republicans.
We can see now that the social conservatives finally got their nose under the tent and House Speaker John Boehner has been put on notice–do what we say or lose your job. Boehner is a smart enough politician to know that there are just some issues you don’t tack on as a rider to a budget. Obviously he had no choice.
Perhaps we will all survive. But we look absurd to everyone else in the world. We have debt problems but we protect the very wealthy. Some knuckle heads continue to think, even after 25 years of it not paying off, that protecting the very wealthy will produce jobs. Where are those jobs?
We are involved in three wars, and we almost shut the government down over abortion? And not even the right to abortion–it was imaginary abortion. The radicals wanted to kill off Planned Parenthood. Now Planned Parenthood is universally known as the place where people who don’t want to get pregnant go. Patients can get relatively inexpensive birth control and required health services. Planned Parenthood also takes medicaid patients, unlike so many other medical facilities. What idiots want to shut down places to get contraception in order to fight abortion? Now where is the logic?
Most Americans don’t see abortion or Planned Parenthood as big threats to our country. What they do see as threatening are rising food costs, foreclosures, joblessness, job insecurity, overcrowded classrooms, expensive health care costs and crime. They don’t give a fig about abortion or the fact that some penny of their tax money might find its way into co-mingling money used for abortion.
The culture warriors need to be driven out. We need to get on with running the country. We need to tell these clowns that they are making us the laughing stock. We need to make sure the tail isn’t wagging the dog.
