In the NYT, there’s another account of the bizarre doings of a Congress that, despite an 83 percent disapproval rating, is far more concerned about nullifying the results of the last election through sabotage and gridlock than bringing about any change other than the kind of crude austerity that has clearly failed in Europe. The legislative nihilism is matched by total disrespect for the president. I’m not talking about robust criticism; I’m talking about the contemptuous dismissal in a statement like this:
“These are tough bills,” acknowledged Representative Harold Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Appropriations Committee. “His priorities are going nowhere.”
I’m not surprised that dude is a white guy from Kentucky talking about a black president, I’m sorry to say. Chait, who specializes in Republican pathologies, profiles the House:
The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel
developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses—partisanship, obstruction, gridlock—don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.
And the worst is not behind us.
He believes that Boehner’s days are numbered:
The fall will bring a quick succession of events — a possible government shutdown and a debt ceiling fight — merely to avoid calamity. If Boehner gets through those events, plus stiffing conservatives on the Benghazi investigation, he’ll be facing a potential open rebellion even before he tries to cut some kind of deal on immigration. If Boehner holds on to his job through the next election I’ll be surprised and impressed. The walls are closing in on him.
The Dish 