Telestial State

Following December’s disastrous fracturing of the GOP over the payroll tax cut extensions, the GOP held a party meeting for all 242 house members to come up with a unified agenda for 2012. Emerging from the meeting was a consensus between the slightly less crazy main GOP and far right tea party members to generically hate on Obama, and nothing else. Much like KFC’s Double Down is disaster in a wrapper for America, House Speaker Boehner has unveiled his party’s plan for 2012: doubling down on the same obstructionism that was present in 2011.

Not content with still managing to find 13% of the population that approves of how congress is functioning, and fully aware that the American people are pissed off at partisan obstructionism, Boehner has instructed his various committee chairs to “expedite all oversight investigations of the administration to highlight any policies or regulations that have hindered the economy.” Essentially to find out ways to drag the administration through the dirt. Note too that none of these committees are charged with fixing these problems or even to *gasp* come up with some own ideas of their own. No, they’re just supposed to muckrake.

Even within the GOP, some house members are chafing at the idea that 2012 should be about obstruction and nothing else. Many have ideas they want to see pass, and realize that they need to be palatable to Senate Democrats (and the President) without which, their legislation is DOA. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) complained that “We need to quit passing bills over here and cheering for ourselves when we know they’re dead on arrival over there.”

Ignoring Obama’s repeated calls during the State of the Union to stop being the party of “no” and to actually work on productive legislation, Utah’s congressional delegation instead yawned at the ideas they’ve already repeatedly ignored and obstructed. “Speech was a profound disappointment, because we’ve heard this speech and these empty promises before,” Orrin Hatch had his grandson tweet. “I don’t know quite how to say this: It’s like, been there, done that, seen it, heard it before,” said Rob Bishop, channeling his inner valley girl. Chaffetz called it a “populist speech with rhetoric that is simply not true.” A speech that Chaffetz apparently enjoyed, at least for it’s humor.

Expect instead for 2012 to continue to feature legislative blockades for anything that doesn’t conform to party values and ideas, slashing taxes for the rich, slashing benefits for those on Medicare and Social Security, chasing after that dastardly Planned Parenthood and NPR like Wile E Coyote chases the Road Runner, and other threats to shut down various government agencies. At the very least we can expect more angry statements from Hatch et al about how their obstruction is totally helping make things better for America.