WaPo is (finally) starting to get after it in the bigly kinda way we've been needing them to do for - well, let's just say, "For a long fucking time!"
Catherine Rampell:
A month ago, House Republicans — at the White House’s urging — shoved a terrible health-care bill through to a vote. They did so without knowing how much it would cost, how many people would lose insurance under the bill, whether it would meet Senate rules required for a budget reconciliation vote or even what was in the legislation. Some legislators admitted that they had not read it before voting.
This collective ignorance was deliberate. They didn’t want to know the verdict on any of these matters, because if they did, they might have to admit to the public — and to themselves — that they’d come up short. Better to celebrate that they did something than learn how shoddy that something was.
We have a dysfunctional federal government in place, and the reasons for that dysfunction - while not solely the fault of one of our major parties - is largely because Repubs have been winning seats in congress using a tried-n-true formula:
Catherine Rampell:
A month ago, House Republicans — at the White House’s urging — shoved a terrible health-care bill through to a vote. They did so without knowing how much it would cost, how many people would lose insurance under the bill, whether it would meet Senate rules required for a budget reconciliation vote or even what was in the legislation. Some legislators admitted that they had not read it before voting.
This collective ignorance was deliberate. They didn’t want to know the verdict on any of these matters, because if they did, they might have to admit to the public — and to themselves — that they’d come up short. Better to celebrate that they did something than learn how shoddy that something was.
1) Fuck something up
2) Point at it and say, "Hey look, that's all fucked up."
3) Campaign on "fixing" the problem
4) Once in office, it's "Wow - this is worse than I thought - but I'm willing to make the sacrifice and stay here doing the people's work blah blah cha-ching blah blah".
Remember now - St Ronnie Rayguns always told us the problem is the government, so for a fat slice of the American pie made up of the rubes who swallow any little piece of shit that floats by, plus a bunch of Watch-It-Burn types, somehow it makes sense to put people in charge who say they'll fix it while they stay there for a good long time getting richer by looking for the next opportunity to fuck something up so they can stay on the gravy train that they've convinced their voters is awful and so they need to re-elect them to keep fighting the good fight to shut the whole thing down.
Throw in a negligent (sometimes deliberately complicit) Press, and it really is just a ginormous Reality TV show.
People with living thinking brains don't accept this nonsense as the way it needs to be.
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