Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Far Right Pushes for Yet Another Government Shutdown

I just don't understand the thinking of the far right.

Rush Limbaugh is now telling his audience the federal government “damn well needs to be shut down” because President Obama intends to take executive actions on immigration policy. Erick Erickson is thinking along the same lines, pushing for a shutdown in a blog post, and reminding his Republican allies that their party has never actually faced adverse consequences from their previous shutdowns, so they have no incentive to back off now.
 The shutdown was a massive waste of time and this one will be too. Obama can take executive action on immigration policy no matter what the Congress does. The last time they shut down the government they wanted to get rid of Obamacare. That didn't happen and there was no end game in sight. So the GOP had to slink away and waste everyone's time and the market dropped. This is just a repeat of that sort of thinking.

The GOP shuts down the government against the wishes of their leadership and then Obama goes ahead and gives out amnesty anyway. Then what does the GOP do? Stamp their feet and jump up and down until Obama changes his mind? Cut off money to border security? It doesn't make any sense. 

What Rush and his cronies need to understand is that the best way to do immigration reform is to put a decent bipartisan immigration bill on Obama's desk and have him veto it. Then when Obama does his executive order he actually looks like an "imperial president" shunning the wishes of the Congress.

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