Disclaimer: The following is an observation, and if you lean towards the conservative end of the political spectrum, you will not like this post at all. I try not to venture into these political debates for obvious reasons, but the current circumstances warranted my thoughts here.
I finally got a chance to see the fantastic historical drama, Lincoln. What a movie. To see Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is to see Lincoln himself. And to see the trials and travails President Lincoln endured is priceless. Plus, to see some of the inner workings of the work done to pass the 13th Amendment, the abolition of slavery, is equally priceless. I could not help but see parallels in that movie with the current state of affairs related to the government-induced shutdown. Sure, there are some parallels between these two events, but on a very topical and very basic level. One obviously cannot come close to comparing the abolition of slavery to what caused the current government shutdown.
A vote to modify the U.S. Constitution to end slavery by way of an amendment was a tremendous undertaking. Both sides sparred and bickered to convey their point across the aisle in the hopes of making a convincing argument. Now, compare that to the pettiness behind the shutdown and why it continues to fester. And what bothers me more than anything is where the GOP lays the blame and how they go about laying this blame, and why I chose to wade into this prickly political discussion.
According many a conservative, the blame lays right at the feet of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, or as it is pejoratively known, ObamaCare. Tea party faction conservatives say that the President should repeal the ACA in order to bring them back to the negotiating table. They want the President to repeal a law that this same Congress voted into law. They want the Democrats to repeal a law that was signed into law. A law held up by the United States Supreme Court as constitutional. The Republicans now hold up the day-to-day business of the government just because they did not get their way in the almost forty times they voted to try to repeal the ACA-- an act whose origins and ideas are GOP and capitalist-based. Apparently, all of these folks forgot that Republican Mitt Romney installed a extremely similar act while as the governor of Massachusetts several years ago.
But the hypocrisy does not stop there. Perhaps a day or so after the government shutdown, a GOP congressman was seen harassing US Park Rangers at a closed DC war memorial. This congressman's rant hinged on why DC war memorials were closed to the public. Uh, really? No, seriously. Really? Let's just say that any Republican congressman can look at his or herself in the mirror if they want the best answer to those type of questions. Thankfully when this happened, a furloughed government worker happened to be nearby, caught wind of these misdirected accusations and called out the congressman. Republican lawmakers and celebrities are now found trolling in and around DC memorials in order to prove that President Obama's reluctance to negotiate is the main reason for the government shutdown. I guess if you say it enough times, it becomes the truth. Changing the narrative seems to be a last ditch effort for GOP in this pricey political scrum.
This dissonance is certainly deafening.
I am sorry if you do not agree with me here, but I just cannot wrap my head around the GOP notion that President Obama is behind the government shutdown when it is not up to him to come up with a Congressional spending bill. Oh...did you catch that? I said, Congressional spending bill and not a Presidential spending bill. The blame lays not on President Obama and a repeal of the ACA, but with those whose job it is to come up with a spending bill. It is up to those folks whose sole purpose to be in Washington, DC is to find a way to keep this country moving forward and not to keep it from working and standing still at the expense of the taxpayers.
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