Tuesday, September 26, 2017

How Strange. Not.

By Baxter

Well! Not a very good day for the Republican Establishment, is it?

Their latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act went down in flames, and the appointed successor to the Alabama Senate seat of Jeff Sessions has just been obliterated by an extra-legal whackjob religious nutcase. AND Bob Corker is retiring. (By the way, we find the timing of Corker's announcement very interesting. Just sayin'.)

In light of this chaos, we cats are thinking back to the times when government worked. When was the last time that Congress actually accomplished a major piece of domestic legislation that not only changed the course of US history but also benefited millions of Americans? Gosh! It was the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010!

Everybody seemed to hate it then — and yes, we cats blame the Democratic Party and President Obama for failing to sell it — but now, it's the law of the land, and people like it. Or at least, they like it enough to be willing to show up in wheelchairs and get dragged out of too-small hearing rooms in opposition to its repeal. Which are mighty bad optics for the Republicans.

We are tempted to chortle too much at the GOP's travails. Our glee is tempered by our knowledge that the country relies on two sane, functioning political parties, and for awhile now the Republican side of that equation has so surrendered itself to the crazies that it makes governing impossible.

Maybe that's what the right-wingers want. But most rational, normal Americans prefer to have a federal government that doesn't nag them too much but which will be around to help them in a pinch. This the Bannons of the world don't understand, and until they do, we cats HISS.

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