I have to say that regardless of what happens, I’ll always be grateful to Barack Obama for attempting to get our elected officials to act like adults and take the people’s problems seriously. As he tries to iron out a decent set of health care reforms that will help millions of people, the right-wing is doing things like this. It’s ridiculous. It’s frustrating and aggravating. But it won’t ever change. Which, by the way, is why I’ve given up thinking about politics in terms of what government can accomplish and instead have come to the conclusion that the most important thing in politics is simply keeping the Republicans out of power. It isn’t an inspiring philosophy, but it isn’t based in cynicism either. I still believe in progressive governance, and I think most progressive ideas are good policy and good politics, so I don’t argue for trimming our sails. I worry that trimming our sails is exactly what puts the larger goal of keeping the Republicans out of power at risk.
But, ultimately, the Republicans are extremely dangerous and their ideas will hurt people both here at home and abroad. Look what they did to the fiscal health and international reputation of this country in eight short years! Dick Cheney is not uniquely insane and George W. Bush is not uniquely incompetent. They are probably slightly above average in their sanity and competence within their party.
