So the Tea Party strategy to defund Obamacare has failed miserably and not only that, they GOP has also had to surrender every single concession they asked for, and were going to receive, back in early September. The only thing the republicans got in this whole fiasco was a 14 point drop in the polls and an almost certain Democratic victory in the 2014 elections.
Yes, there was one minscule change to Obamacare requiring harder standards for determining income for people applying for healthcare coverage at the exchanges, but this really was something the Democratic caucus was trying to get changed anyway, so it's not a victory for the GOP, just a minor face saving measure so they can claim some microscopic victory to the few voters they still have backing them.
They also got the talks on the budget they wanted, but they were going to get that anyway. The Democrats in both houses and President Obama had told them that if they open up the Government and raise the debt ceiling they could negotiate on any subject and any law...except now, because the GOP dragged the shutdown out so long that their approval ratings were down to 3 Tea Party members in backwater Nebraska, the talks the GOP wanted are now being conducted under rules and guidelines outlined by the Democratic party. This means that when the final budget negotiations come out on December 13th it will likely have far more concessions for the Democratic party than the GOP. Tea Party concessions in light of the recent tantrum that cost the American people over 20 billion dollars will likely be few if any. And any more changes to Obamacare are most certainly off the table now that polls show support for Obamacare on the rise.
So what did the Tea Party learn from all this? Likely nothing. They will almost certainly try to block the next budget proposal if it contains any Democratic concessions and they will likely do the same with the Debt ceiling on February 7th. The Tea Party agenda is to shut down the Federal Government and reduce our country to local governments run by the wealthy and oppressing the poor. So while they failed to crash the country's economy completely, they did manage to throw us into another deep recession. And you can bet their wealthy donors got more wealthy during the crisis because they knew it was coming. They likely planned it.
So did the GOP learn anything from this? Sure, they learned not to trust their Tea Party fundamentalists. They learned that they are going to have to fight super hard to keep their seats in the next election, even in districts where a Democrat stands no chance of winning because the Tea Party is coming for everyone. Democrats and Republicans alike. They learned that they are not one party, but two parties split not on ideological grounds, but on strategic grounds. The GOP are old school master strategists and the Tea Party are the new, impatient renegades that will use suicide missions and berserker tactics with no thought of if they can win or not, only what damage they can do to the enemy. In this case the enemy is America. The enemy is us and the Tea Party is coming for us.
Remind you of anyone?
Maybe...the Taliban?
No comments:
Post a Comment