Republican Jackass of the Week

The Boner blinked.

"There should be no conversation on shutting government down," Regressive Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said. "That's not the goal. There's no interest on our part on shutting the government down."

No wonder this man drinks so much.

That was then.

Now, after a closed-door meeting with his caucus, John Boehner has caved to the crazy, extreme, far rightwing fringe of his party, the Teabaggers, and agreed to hold a House vote on a measure that would keep the government funded, but only if Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is defunded.

"We are going to pass a resolution that will defund Obamacare."

As I've written before, Obamacare isn't going anywhere. The Teabaggers have led John around by his orange nose before, voting 41 times in a row to defund or repeal Obamacare. But that's not going to happen.

The Affordable Care Act passed the House and the Senate in 2010, was signed into law by the President of the United States, and has even gotten the rightwing Supreme Court's endorsement of its legality.

It's the law of the land and it's not going to be repealed. Funding Obamacare is mandatory.

But that won't stop these fanatical ideologues from holding a virtual gun to the head of America to get their way.

Never before in history has any congress attempted to extort an American president into succumbing to their political demands by holding the USA hostage, threatening to shut down the government -- which will stop payments to US troops, retirees, and close many government services -- as well as damage the full faith and credit of the US government by failing to pay our bills. These bills represent the money that congress itself has already spent.

It would be like you going on a wild spending spree with your own credit card and then refusing to pay when the bill arrives unless some totally unrelated demand is met.

Some have described the Republicans' demands as a Kamikaze mission, destroying themselves in the process, since everyone knows that if there's a government shutdown, they will be to blame. This is what happened in the '90s. Back then a similar Republican-led government shutdown resulted in one Newt Gingrich losing his speakership and the Republicans losing their congressional majority.

Will they go off the deep end again and destroy themselves? Or will they tell the Teabaggers enough is enough, sit down and shut up, and let the adults take over?

We'll find out by the end of the month.

Regressive Republican and Speaker of the House (for now), John Boehner. This week's Republican Jackass of the Week.