The Theater of the Absurd

Politics often involves theater, that’s unavoidable. But right now, our politics seems to have become the theater of the absurd. Brace yourself. Things are about to get ugly.

● Debt Ceiling Showdown: The Republicans are gearing up for a huge fight over raising the debt ceiling. It’s going to be a slaughter. In fact, this is turning into a textbook example of what not to do:

1. You never announce that you are planning to hold the country hostage over some future event. That’s the surest way to get the public to turn against you because you’ve basically announced that you plan to cynically hurt people in the name of getting something you want. Yet, that is what the Republicans have done, they’ve actually bragged about their ability to get goodies out of Obama by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. Wow.

2. You never take hostages without a good reason. Yet, the Republicans haven’t come up with their list of demands. This has disaster written all over it. By announcing their plan to take hostages this early without the slightest hint of a reason for doing so, the Republicans just pitched the media the perfect softball. The media can now attack them as cynics who want to hurt the country for partisan reasons, and without that list of demands, the Republicans have left the media with total control to frame the issues and the arguments.

Moreover, without a list of demands, i.e. goals, it’s impossible to define victory or to develop a plan on how to achieve it. Further, without such goals, it becomes impossible to get everyone on the same page, which is a recipe for infighting, especially with responsibility-free purists screaming bloody murder from the sidelines to help their ratings and fundraising.

3. You never remind people of the other times your plans blew up on you before you try something like this. Yet the Republicans have already started connecting this to the fiscal cliff fiasco and are even foaming at the mouth about shutting down the government again... the same maneuver that neutered a much stronger Newt Gingrich. Yee haw.

I am now 95% sure that the Republican Party is just being played for parody.

● Chuck Hagel: With Leon Panetta leaving as Secretary of Defense, Obama has appointed former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace him. Hagel is being attacked by the left over some gay slur he made in 2008 and because they don’t like the fact he’s a Republican, even if he does endorse Democrats. So they want him gone. Enter the Republicans.

The Republicans are upset because: Hagel was one of the only Republican critics of the Iraq War, he voted against US sanction on Iran and Libya, he tried to lift the embargo on Cuba, he described the Defense Department as “bloated” and said it needed “to be pared down,” and he apparently made some disparaging remarks about the influence of the “Jewish lobby.” So they are banding together to bring him down.

The most likely result is that the Republicans beat their pudgy chests for a while and then Hagel gets confirmed with 60+ votes, proving Republican impotence. A worse result would be that they take him down, doing the left’s dirty work for them, and Obama appoints a hard-core Democrat who sails through easily and does significant damage to the Defense Department.

More parody.

● Harrumph Tax Evaders: Finally, just to prove that idiocy isn’t purely domestic, the Prime Minister of Britain, who looks increasingly like a Cupie Doll to me, huffed and puffed and whined about those big bad international companies who avoid British taxes. Rather than fix Britain’s tax laws, which are what allowed these companies to avoid paying taxes, Cupie wants some sort of tax treaty or something to keep companies from following the rules established by Britain to avoid British taxes. Take that Starbucks!

Does this seem like a joke to anyone?