It’s official. The Republican Party is out of ideas and is resorting to insane tactics to mollify the base. Well in all fairness, I guess that it’s been official for a few years now. Spoiler alert.
I try to be as objective as possible when writing these columns. After all, this is a newspaper and not some rag of low repute. But come on. How is anyone supposed to take the GOP seriously? Are we really supposed to believe that they can shut down the government of the richest country in the world and then get their way?
I’ll save you a false sense of indignant outrage because I am not even outraged anymore, just bored and disappointed. The GOP lacks leverage, Democrats hold the ultimate advantage, the GOP refuses to compromise, and people get hurt in the process. Rinse, repeat.
Our country is facing so many real problems today, from a widening wealth gap to a broken criminal justice system to a wholly inadequate education policy. Our elected leaders should actually be doing something to address these problems and so many more. Instead they get sidetracked every six months over fake problems, made-up issues and phantom crises. It’s like watching a congress of cats with a laser pointer for a speaker.
Throughout our long national experiment in self-determination, we have been forced to come to terms with a level of dysfunction in our government. That’s fine and actually somewhat comforting. After all, do we really want a government that is so effective and efficient that it can steamroll every other aspect of life? Of course not, but we also expect to be led by people who don’t want self-destructive government. That is what we have now. The Tea Party wave in 2010 ushered in a bad populist movement. Instead of committing themselves to actually accomplishing something or striving to create change, the fringe element (about half) of the GOP has been happy to create chaos and attempt to break the federal government.
Luckily, most of the people in Washington seem to be reasonable – enough. President Obama refuses to be moved by the desperate heave of the nation over the ledge. His health care reform law is slowly being rolled out and will do more to fix America’s broken health care system than any initiative since the Great Society of LBJ. It will drive down costs, bring more people into the marketplace, end lifetime caps and rid our society of the evil of denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. It won’t be perfect and should be amended as needed. But in twenty years’ time, Republican politicians will be bending over backwards to prove their commitment to its reforms – much like they do now for Social Security.
Senate Democrats are holding firm and showing some backbone. All 52 of them and their two independent allies voted to strip the Republican gimmick out of the bill to fund the government. They have learned, finally, that courage and strength can be a strategy in Congress. Of course they also know the political reality that government shutdowns rarely help the party that creates them. Just ask Newt Gingrich.
The only way to truly stop this cycle is to vote out the people that have created it. Voters need to realize that elections have consequences, and so do politicians.
Rich Robinson is a junior majoring in telecommunication and film. His column runs weekly on Tuesdays.
