Not Surprised

No longer am I surprised by the antics of freshman Republicans though I am often amused, and occasionally saddened or worried. Poplicola had a good take on debt limit deal, and the more I think about it the more I become immeshed in trying to understand what happened and who are the new people governing (using that word loosely) our country.

Representative Kevin Yoder (R-KS), someone I have reason to believe is a very well intentioned and caring person, had this up on his facebook last Friday:

The ruse of course is that if you search “debit limit plan” at whitehouse.gov nothing comes up.  ”Hahaha, socialist Barry still doesn’t get it”. Normal people will not equivocate an empty website search as proof the President had, or has, no plan on the debt.  First, they probably would not discount the possibility not everything a politician thinks is dictated on their website. Second, they might realize that another search term could be in order, in fact a search for “debt”, “deficit”, “deficit plan” or even ‘debt limit plan’ (that is without any quotations) will find plenty on the White House website regarding the President’s position on the matter, including new releases and speaches the president gave on the debt. So even when the White House makes efforts to be open, transparent and clear on the President’s positions they not only go unrecognized but get criticized for never even addressing the issue.

This from Yoder who voted against the final debt limit deal which received a majority vote from his fellow Republicans.  What is his plan, default? Well, go to his website and search for “debt limit plan” and dang – nothing comes up.  Should we conclude he has no plan?

No, of course not, we think more rationale than that.  You can search his Congressional website for “debt”, you can google ‘Yoder AND debt’ to pull up news stories, you can visit his campaign and twitter websites to try and find more.  It would be assanine to quickly assume a sitting member of Congress didn’t have some general thoughts on reducing the debt and had never made any of them public, but that seems to be Yoder’s belief regarding President Obama. Perhaps he actually knows the President has had a plan to address the debt but just wanted to make fun of the website search (despite the irony his website also produces the same blank search), and for that I am just over reacting to his cruel humor.

But their antics just became a lot less funny, and it is hard for me to be amused any longer.  Yoder and others ignore facts, they misrepresent the truth, all in a false belief that they somehow are the only ones who care about the debt.

I care deeply about the debt but don’t accept the notion we can simply address it with big sweeping cuts to our spending and for that Yoder would have me, the President, and many other Americans are tagged as genuinely uncaring about this important issue.  It is hard to pinpoint where the extreme right went off the rails but it seems to me to have had something to do with believing all of government, the media, and registered democrats are in league together in some mystery cancer that is dragging down the nation. Sounds crazy to me, but Yoder and others act like they are the vaccine?  I think notion came about via gross misunderstanding of public polices, government functions, and economic theory but what would you do if you believed in the apocalyptic analysis?  Would you negotiate with the other side of the isle, would you listen to arguments by the President?  Probably not and that clearly has happened.  Political discourse has always played an important role and nudging stubborn elected officials into silent concessions.  The truth could always percolate through to one’s conscience given enough time.  There is no discourse with the freshman republicans in the House, they do not listen and can make their own conclusions (or jokes) based on what little information they have, mostly other false assumptions from their fellow thinking conservatives on the far right.

That is it for now, just further confirmation that the new governing republicans are here, and do not look to be changing their tune.

Related posts:

1. Why are Republicans against extending the payroll tax cut?
2. Why do we even have a debt limit?
3. The Coming Debt Ceiling Debate