Chutzpah

Here's a shocker, if it were the case that "shock" meant "duh:"

WASHINGTON D.C. -- As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington, D.C.

The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."

[...]

For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.

Read the whole revelatory article. It's the R game plan, doubly: first, do everything possible to make Obama's programs to fail; and, then, blame Obama for the failure (to the extent that they failed) of his programs. It's the twenty-first century version of that old definition of chutzpah: kill your parents, then plead for mercy on the grounds of being an orphan.

Rs particularly like to point out the failure of bipartisanship during Obama's tenure, and they don't just imply it's his fault; it's central to their message. Counting on the lack of memory of their dumbified audience, they ignore as if they never happened the efforts the president made at the beginning of his term. Efforts that led to Eric Cantor exclaiming that they'd had more face time with President Obama in a couple weeks than they'd had with George Bush in eight years. Ooops. Gotta shut that down in a hurry. And shut it they did. You can't blame the guy who got the door slammed in his face. Well, of course they can. But you can't -- assuming "you" means someone to whom truth has even the most minimal meaning.

Gotta hand it to R politicos: they correctly deduced the gullibility of their base -- especially the religiously inclined, whose need to trust in easy answers from pseudo-authorities they've been manipulating for decades, very, very successfully. Still, it's both breathtaking and deeply sad how completely their trashing of the process has been accepted by their audience.

I think it's unprecedented. For better or worse, even after the Supreme Court/Florida/losing the popular vote debacle, several congressional Dems felt obliged to go along with (way too much of) George Bush's agenda. That the Rs were already planning their monolithic obstruction literally on day one of Barack Obama's presidency says everything you need to know about their view of democracy and the electoral process. And it removes any doubt about who's been poisoning the well. And who's responsible for the total lack of respect that now characterizes the political process.

Whereas I think it's possible Obama could win in November -- hardly a slam-dunk -- I can't see the Ds regaining control of the House; and it's entirely possible they could lose the Senate. Why? Well, in part because they're so maddeningly inept at messaging; and because they deserve a certain amount of criticism for putting together the mishmash that is the Affordable Care Act, despite the good it's already doing, and about which they've been unable to get heard over the screams from the right. But, mainly, because Rs are willing to say anything, no matter how outrageous, about Ds; and because there are enough brainwashed people out there happy to accept it. People who'd elect such embarrassing legislators as Virginia Foxx or Louie Gohmert or Alan West the first time around will find no reason, ever, to un-elect them.

Born of Rovian cynicism and fueled by Foxian dishonesty, we've become an impossibly polarized country, where half the people are willing to believe the worst, no matter how outrageous. In real life, I'm a lot more moderate than I sound here. But when the plans of one side are based entirely upon obstructionism and lying about the other side, and upon cynical attempts, for their personal benefit above that of the country, to convince their voters -- yet again -- that their pre-failed policies deserve yet another chance, when the results can no longer be in question; and when it appears that their efforts to deceive have been wildly successful in getting the non-wealthy to vote against their own interests yet again, well, it's impossible to be even-handed. What's going on is obvious. What will happen if they prevail is not in doubt: we've seen what happens, just a handful of years ago.

In what universe can this be happening?