Reading Politico’s Friday lead piece, “The GOP Should Just Do It,” on my iPhone this morning, I simply assumed it was an editorial. The tone is so partisan, inflammatory, and derisive, the thought that such a thing would be presented as “journalism” by Politico never crossed my mind. But in Politico’s left-wing world, comparing the GOP to the Cowardly Lion and claiming Republicans are less reasonable than a segregationist, is what now passes for journalism.
Shut down the government! Blow through the debt ceiling! Subject the United States to fiscal chaos or financial ruin if your party can’t get its way on unrelated ideological priorities!
With apologies to Nike, maybe it’s time for the House Republicans to stop threatening and “Just do it.”
Like an insistent teenage driver, determined to see how fast he can take that blind curve on a rainy road at night, the GOP seems unwilling to abandon its particular brand of brinkmanship until it winds up in the emergency room. If that’s the case, mightn’t it be better to let the crash happen, if only so the reconstruction can start?
In a Washington in which serial crisis over basic business has become the new norm — and the Republicans’ default negotiating posture has all the bluster of the Cowardly Lion’s “Put ’em uuup! Put ’em uuup!” — perhaps the thing to do is accept the worst. If the latest go-round is simply another ritualized prelude to a temporary solution, another melodramatic installment of “As the World Turns,” then what’s the point? Won’t the same cast be back next month, or next year, battling the same problem?
That is how the article opens, but it is far from the worst of it. Later in the piece, Politico attempts to make the claim that Republicans who oppose ObamaCare are more unreasonable than an old Senate segregationist:
It’s worth remembering that Senator Richard Russell of Georgia spent decades defending segregation, but when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he was among the first to insist, “These statutes are now on the books and it becomes our duty as good citizens to live with them.”
Want to know what Politico did not think was “worth remembering”? That the segregationist they quoted was a Democrat.
You can sense that the left-wing Politico is every bit as frustrated with GOP efforts to kill ObamaCare as Obama himself. It is pretty obvious from this “journalism” that Politico is desperate to see ObamCare as settled law. Why else would Politico go so far as to try to shame Republicans by quoting a racist Democrat: “It becomes our duty as good citizens to live with” … ObamaCare.
This, of course, is a complete contradiction with Politico’s and the Democrats’ never-ending crusade to upend other settled laws — like marriage, voter ID, and stand-your-ground.
Apparently, Politico and Democrats see some “settled laws,” and the ceaseless political battles to change them, as more equal than others.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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