Dear Dr. Bones,
Scott Brown’s spokesman: Yeah, he might vote for Reid’s bill.Both sides now understand that the final bill will be a compromise between Reid and Boehner. If you’re a Republican, why hand Reid extra leverage in those negotiations by helping him to pass his own plan? The Democrats are going to knock down Boehner’s bill tonight; the GOP should turn around and knock Reid’s down too. That would preserve the Republican talking point that they’ve passed two bills in the House while the Democrats have passed nothing in the Senate and it’ll reduce some of Reid’s clout when he huddles with Boehner and McConnell. Instead, Brown sounds ready to give Reid bipartisan cover. Why? He can placate Massachusetts voters by voting for the final bill instead. He keeps daring conservatives to primary him and hand that Senate seat back to the Democrats. One step too far this time? (&c. &c.) |
One is continually reduced to doubting that the up-market and H*rv*rd and _Juris Doctor_ (&c. &c.) Blue Blazers have much grasp of any U. S. politics much to the whight of their own. If they got out and read _The Boston Humbug_ a little more, their noses would soon toughen up enough to dispense with the training wheels, and, ¿who knows?, they might even find little gems like that one for themselves on occasion.
The obvious fun of the thing, admittedly, is that the neocomrade of America’s Otherparty who scribbled it has very inadequate notions -- fantastic ones, even -- about our Hill City Commonwealth. The late Marshall Stalin had about as much reason to worry about a primary challenger as does Senator Fratboy. ¡Imagine a tail torn by intestine strife between two different factions of dog-controller wannabes! Economic an’ cultural neoeactionaries in South Carolina [*] may have lots of leeway to indulge in such luxuries, but in these parts, if whightwingers don.t all flap together, they will soon drop off the ’scope altogether.
Less obviously, Party Neocomrade ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ does seem to grasp the essence of the Fratboy Two-Step: first vote with Von Böhner an’ the boys to please his neocarpetbaggers an’ fundmongers, but then vote with Mr. Reid because reëlection in Massachusets with EXCLUSIVELY the votes of neoscalawags is not a promisin’ plan.
The first step has already been taken: Default fears worsen as US Senate blocks debt-ceiling bill. ¿Who can look at that 59-41 split and not rejoice that ’tis Fratboy of MA who consistutes that final ‘1’? (I believe somebooby around here recently spoke of cabooses . . ..)
Unfortunately for the Otherparty, as yet forty-one-percent supermajorities only work negatively. However I daresay the neocomrades are workin’ on it even as we keyboard, strivin’ both to reduce the subpercentage required an’ to make that new, improved subpercentage decisive in ALL matters of neolegislation. "¡Just Vote NO!" may cover most of the Otherparty’s publicly acknowledged requirements, but let’s face it, if one is successfully to run a railroad an’ meet a payroll, at least a little somethin’ more than naked _¡Nie pozwalam!_ is required once in a while. [**]
But that will be then, and now is only now.
Nevertheless, the court historians of Princess Posterity will be derelict in their duty, should they fail to celebrate our own Senator Fratboy in conjunction with the Spirit of Forty-One, or ‘neominoritarianism’, or whatever terminiology becomes standard.
Somebooby must always take the first step, an’ in this case, ¡Fratboy’s the one! [***]
Happy days.
--JHM
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[*] A province not chosen at random. Even apart from that December 1860 business, which still rankles on rainy days, just yesterday every single Fedguv ("¡boooo!") representative from darkest Calhounestan voted ‘No’ on Johannes, Freiherr von Böhner’s little dogmatic exercise in its last-ditch form:
| SOUTH CAROLINA Democrats — Clyburn, N. Republicans — Duncan, N; Gowdy, N; Mulvaney, N; Scott, N; Wilson, N. |
Mr. J. E. (ahem) Clyburn is, I presume, clinically sane, and voted against _Böhnerismus_ from the near side, so to say.
His colleagues from the Otherparty, out of sight around the bend an’ whighter than a driven snowjob, are (I further presume) the sort of goodfolks who would run against Stalin, vile traitor to the neorevolution. Or possibly they are terrorized of bein’ primaried to death themselves by even-whighter-than-whights. Either way, they fit in with the over-all ethos of ideological extortion which Party Neocomrade ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ takes for granted. But which becomes only a bad joke when injudiciously exported to Bluesachusetts.
_¡Fas est et ab hoste doceri_! It’s (just barely) worth learning from ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ to have some degree of familiarity with local conditions before offering unsolicited advice to like-minded politicians far away. More useful is to observe that the Party neocomrade obviously approves of this ideological extortion --indeed, he practices it--an’ is not just describin’ what happens with that Murdochian fairembalance we have come to know and love. Inasmuch as our beloved MA does undeniably rather resemble Calhounestan in Her unipartisanship, worrying a little about whether what I have labeled "ideological extortion" could happen here would do no harm, though of course the Otherparty would scarcely be the focus of concern.
*
[**]
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[***] If any future court historians read these words, allow me to suggest that the very blueness of Bloserchusetts may have helped inspired Fratboy’s gallant neominoritarian quest. In what was otherwise a very good year nationally, the Otherparty of MA elected less than twenty-three (22.5) percent of the General Court, an’ zero (0.00) percent of our Fedguv Representatives, ¡yet in the Senate of the United States . . . !
Life being unfair, South Carolina has yet to return the favor by elevatin’ Congressman Clyburn or the like to sit in the seat of J. C. Calhoun an’ J. S. Thurmond.
(( SC bein’ SC, I won’t hold my breath waiting for that particular instance of fairembalance. ))
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