When will Republicans grow up and start participating in the government they were elected to serve instead of exhibiting their childish behavior and grandstanding?
The disrespect of the Senate, the press, and the American worker by Senator Bunning in holding up the much-needed Jobs Bill is the most recent example of the party’s “Country Last” actions. Yes, the bill finally got through the Senate, but Bunning's action forcing the process to go into extra innings resulted in the taxpayers footing the bill for the unnecessary inefficiencies in the stopping and restarting of critical programs. Senator Kyl’s admonition that people are using unemployment assistance instead of working in this recession economy makes as much sense as saying Republican senators are all sexual miscreants based on the actions of Ensign, Vitter, and Craig.
Their use of props, like the exhibition of the pile of papers representing the Health Care bill at the recent summit is another example. Surely, one would expect a bill this complicated to be voluminous, especially when they and their Blue Dog co-conspirators attach superfluous anti-abortion language and other peripheral pet projects to the legislation. Their arguments about the content of the bill may be valid, but their continuous harping on its length is what one would expect from a high schooler who is required to read War and Peace for a literature class.
Like spoiled brats who won’t take “no” for an answer, Republicans are notorious for trying (sometimes successfully) to negate the results of elections. Their successful abortion of the 2000 Florida presidential recount and their unsuccessful attempt to nullify the 1996 Presidential election are prime examples. But they are also proactively using the recall process (as they did in California) to try to overturn the 2006 election of Senator Menendez[1].
Probably the most notorious and terrifying action of the Republicans has been their lack of outrage (and in some cases tacit approval) of the actions of Joseph A. Stack in crashing his plane into the IRS building in Texas. Nobody enjoys paying taxes, but if we didn’t have the IRS, where would we get the trillions of taxpayer dollars to engage in the Republican wars in the Middle East?
Do some Democrats engage in this childlike behavior? Sure – just think of Congressman William Jefferson, who hid thousands of bribe dollars in his freezer. But it seems that these immature Democrats are the exception while the silliness and child like obfuscation of Republicans are more the rule. What ever happened to a constructive loyal opposition?
[1] Yes, I know it’s the Tea Party that’s behind this, but until the Republicans renounce some of the more egregious and violent aspects of the Tea Party’s platform (like Obama as Hitler and threats of violence at rallies), I consider them as one and the same.
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