The signpost up ahead clearly reads “Dead End.” Unfortunately, for the American people and our nation’s economic health, the GOP either does not see that sign ahead, or else they’re just ignoring it; I say the latter. The party of “No” has bought itself a reputation as being bad losers who just cannot get it. There is a reason why it only controls one-half of the legislative body of government of this nation and yet it continues to refuse to accept the results of the last general election, or even the results of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the Affordable Care Act known as ObamaCare is constitutional.
So here we stand, in the middle of a government shutdown because Republicans want certain concessions they could not get democratically through the elections and so now, they have chosen to take it by force. U.S. House Speaker, Rep. John Boehner (OH) knows well that if he just put the budget that was passed by the Senate up for a vote, enough moderate Republicans will vote with Democrats to approve it. That means a majority of House Representatives are for a clean budget deal, without any changes to ObamaCare. Instead, he has chosen to ignore democracy in favor of allowing Tea Party factions in the House and in the Senate to dictate to him what they want, not the majority.
Republicans must realize surely, at least those who do not have their heads too far up in the clouds, ObamaCare is not going anywhere. Americans are already signing up on health care exchanges across the nation and on the federal exchange. Democrats and especially the president are hunkered down tight and they’re not going anywhere when it comes to negotiating on ObamaCare for a budget, nor will they negotiate on the upcoming Oct 17 deadline to raise the debt ceiling.
The biggest fear Republicans have is that ObamaCare will work and that people will like it, once they get past all the fear mongering and misinformation that has been handed out to them from either Republican lawmakers or conservative media pundits and commentators. Certainly, there will be problems but those problems can be fixed through amendments. It only takes a civil tongue and a respect for differences, and then a willingness to compromise in order to have a Congress whose main goal is to get things done for the country, which is not what we have had from the Republican side of the aisle in quite a while.
I should also like to add that currently during this shutdown, the president and Democrats are being blamed for not being willing to negotiate – such hypocrites. Then of course, Republicans are trying to deflect the blame toward the president and the Democrats and I believe the American people are smarter than that, even most Republicans.
I predict the first three to five years of ObamaCare – meaning after the mandate becomes active – will be a difficult time. I believe there are still some serious issues that we will face, one being the lack of doctors to fill the mass influx of new patients from the mandate requirement. If Republicans in the House of Representatives had been doing their job, instead of voting senselessly 46 times to repeal ObamaCare, they could have been looking for ways to entice more college bound students to pursue a career in the medical field by perhaps issuing special grants.
Republicans in Congress have chosen to take a dead-end path, not only for their success in overturning or even delaying ObamaCare – which is what they’re demanding in return for a budget to run the government – but also for their party. If the GOP cannot find a different path than it’s currently taking, not only in Washington D.C. but also in states it controls, as the nation grows more enlightened and more liberal – and it will, as history has proven – it will find itself free-falling. Either the Republican Party must move much further to the left than where it is now or it will find itself falling off of the that proverbial cliff and plunge without a net, to its very timely death.
The recent tantrum Republicans in Congress have wreaked upon the nation yet again by shutting down our government may not be the act that brings down the party but it furthers the case that the Republican Party has gone off into the deep end, thanks to the takeover of the Tea Party. Maybe the GOP can no longer govern as a real political party. I do know that if it continues to find ways to use the welfare of this nation as a hostage to its agenda, just because it could not get what it wants democratically, average Republicans will start searching for an alternative. A third party may rise, once moderate get tired of losing, and tired of having their party represented by a small group of Republicans from the far right.
Maybe the Republican Party will finally get it and close its ears to the bigotry and the putrid hatefulness of the far-right extremist of its party. On the other hand, perhaps that Grand Old Party will eventually just fade off into the sunset down that dead-end road. Until then, the rest of America had better hold on tight for the next Republican-manufactured crisis, on the way soon.