I watched Fox News yesterday to see how they handled the aftermath of the Republican plan to shut down the federal government because of the implementation of Obamacare and they had their nice little talking points ready and primed for their viewers. Jon Stewart incorporated some of them in the above clip.
Dooce: I wonder if it's going to be like the sequester where before the sequester we heard the sky is going to fall, it's going to be awful, you're going to feel the pain immediately, hmmmm, not so much.
Goldberg: And the worst thing that happens is that some museums close and someone can't go to the Statue of Liberty.
Hemmer: We were all warned the sky was going to fall, but you woke up this morning and the sun came up, didn't it?
Yes the sky hasn't fallen and as Stewart said, we didn't get hit with a meteor, but for 800,000 people the sky has indeed fallen and the country will slowly begin to suffer more and more as the shutdown continues. it's like when you get the flu, at first you feel somethings wrong, then you get queasy, then a stuffy head and then BANG, you're in bed feeling like you're about to die.
Hosts like Sean Hannity and many others are screaming at the top of their lungs to keep the shutdown going and defund Obamacare or you will be primaried. Since they went ahead and shut it down the govt, they might as well fight to the bitter end is the other view they hold dear. There was talk before the shutdown came by Peter King, who said he had enough votes to pass a clean CR and he was publicly stating that he was pushing for that vote. Well, he got shut down just as well by John Boehner. Why is this happening with so many Republicans voicing opposition to this strategy? Ezra Klein interviewed the NRO's Robert Costa and he dhed real light on the topic: Why Boehner doesn’t just ditch the hard right
EK: How much of this is a Boehner problem and how much of this is a House Republicans problem? Which is to say, if Boehner decided to retire tomorrow, is there another House Republican who has enough trust and allegiance in the conference that he or she could manage the institution more effectively?
RC: What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power. It’s not so much about Boehner. It’s things like the end of earmarks. They move away from Tom DeLay and they think they're improving the House, but now they have nothing to offer their members. The outside groups don't always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members. And so many of these members now live in the conservative world of talk radio and tea party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible. Leaders are dealing with these expectations that wouldn't exist in a normal environment.
It's not about the America people with these people. It's all about the fear. The suicide caucus was created in large part due to the fear that Obama might have on creating more democrats. That fear fueled the conservative media to rev up the requisite amount of hatred for Democrats after president Obama took office and now they have frightened the hell out of the rest of the party. A fewar that rules them and turns them into flat out nutters.
RC: When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.
These people represent a tiny sliver of the populace, but are now running things. The Suicide Caucus is alive and well and insulated. The first episode of Game of Thrones was entitled, Winter is Coming. The problem is that it's already here. What we see and hear on Fox News and their co-conspirators is the will of the party now and there's no end in sight to what harm they will do unless Americans reject this callous form of extremism.
