With government shutdown, Republicans reap what they sow

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/20/with-government-shutdown-republicans-reap-what-they-sow

With government shutdown, Republicans reap what they sow

Richard Wolffe @richardwolffedc

Sat 20 Jan 2018 04.45 GMT Last modified on Sat 20 Jan 2018 06.28 GMT

Today’s Republican party is built on principle. As a matter of principle, the GOP believes it is the only party that can shut down government as a negotiating tactic. The Democrats’ job is to keep that government open and to cave in to its demands. These truths we hold to be self-evident, after watching several rounds of this sad kabuki theater through the Clinton and Obama years. Now that the Democrats have triggered a government shutdown, Republicans are outraged. Because of their principles, you know.

The ideologue responsible for Trump’s budget, Mick Mulvaney, put it best to reporters at the White House on Friday. Mulvaney, now director of the Office of Management and Budget, was previously a South Carolina congressman. In that role, he was one of the chief proponents of the last government shutdown because he opposed Planned Parenthood and Obamacare. Now he says the Democrats have no right to do what he did because, well, that would make them unprincipled.
(snip)

As a matter of principle, it’s Republicans like Mulvaney who are the deficit hawks, caring deeply about the fiscal rectitude of the federal government. Right up to the point when one of them says the words “tax cuts”, which turn out to be far more important than balancing the budget or the national debt.

Thank goodness we have the Republicans in total control of Washington, after all those years of the Democrats failing to pass a real budget. Now we can watch the Republicans create an even more dysfunctional budget process with continuing resolutions that last just a few weeks at a time.
(snip)

At least the 1990s shutdowns were about the budget. The next government shutdown in 2013 was simply about defunding Obamacare and destroying Barack Obama. For some Tea Party-infused Republicans, this was a principled stand. For every Republican senator other than Ted Cruz, it was madness.
(snip)

The GOP believes it has set a brilliant trap for Democrats with a cunning ploy of pretending to care about children’s health insurance. “Who could vote against children?” says the party that allowed the insurance to lapse in October. And who could support the deportation of children? The one thing Republicans didn’t count on was their own president, whose racist rant about “shithole” countries blew up a hard-fought bipartisan deal on immigration.

This is a shithole of the Republicans’ own making. They control all sides of Washington and have now made history by presiding over their own shutdown, under a president who prided himself on knowing the art of the deal. No deal, no sympathy: polls suggest most voters blame both Trump and the Republicans for the open sewer that stretches all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue.
(snip)

[Scarsdale]

1. They did not

waste any time, destroying the country once HE got into the WH. He has no idea what the HELL he is doing, so they are steering him right into their pathway. He is a part time worker, going golfing most weekends, staying in his bedroom every morning and even some afternoons. Useless piece of excrement EVER to reside in the WH. The gop outdid themselves with this useless, dumb, crude, piss poor excuse for a MAN.

[Cha]

2. Richard Wolffe's a good writer, imo

Mahalo, np