How Low Can They Go?

The kluster of keystone kops in the Senate set the bar pretty damn low in ‘09 when they declared that their primary goal was to ensure that Obama was a one-term president. No hint of any concerns about the economy (which was in free-all at the time), the environment (climate change), the infrastructure (crumbling), health care (terrible), wars (still stuck in two) or any other issue that impinged on the lives of Americans. Nope, just make sure the Black Dude doesn’t succeed.

Well, they couldn’t pull it off. Oh, they did manage to undercut almost everything Mr. Dude proposed (except the Stimulus and ACA) but he persevered and won a second term. Their response? Well, since they couldn’t do anything about his continued presence in the White (gasp!) House, they engaged in a scorched earth policy. Oppose everything. Elect crazy right-wingers at every opportunity, gerrymander wherever you can. Block all appointments to Administrative posts, the judiciary, ambassador slots. Defund (or attempt to) government programs, undermine the State Department (Benghazi!!!), the IRS and any other agency that shows any vulnerability.

Well, these tactics haven’t worked either. Obama has managed to persevere, found ways to use Executive authority in begin reforming immigration and taken the initiative in new and critical moves in foreign affairs. Their response? To lower the bar so low that you really have to be a ground-dwelling slug or a blind mole rat to even know where it is!

They set out to systematically undercut the office of the Presidency by having Congress kneecap Obama in his efforts to negotiate a tenuous and tricky set of alliances and treaties in the Middle East. Boehner’s stunt to invite Netanyahu to speak before both houses of Congress without consulting or even informing the President was an unprecedented insult, literally. Never in the nearly 250 years of this country has a Congress ever pulled a stunt this outrageous.

But they weren’t done. The kickback was withering and the GOP found itself on the defensive — as they should have been. You’d think that they’d be perhaps slightly chastened and try a novel approach: do something useful particularly in the dicey area of Middle Eastern politics. Alas, asking this kollation of klowns to act like grownups is futile. Instead they dug a trench in the ground to find a new place for the metaphoric bar. A group of Senators (47 of them or nearly the entire GOP caucus) sent a letter (again, without informing the President) to the leaders of Iran basically warning them not to bother negotiating with the US.

You do not have to be a Constitutional lawyer to be pretty damn sure that this act qualifies as treason. It was so over the top that the New York Daily News (a tabloid with a focused right-wing tilt that has routinely back conservative positions and Republicans for office) blew these idiots out of the water.

They flat-out accused The Forty-Seven of treason and of betraying the Constitution — which is precisely what they’ve done. They have also, pointedly, disrespected, not just Obama the person but the very office itself.

Is there anybody who honestly thinks that they would have made such a series of moves if Obama weren’t Black?