GOP strategy: Taliban - can't beat them so join them.

I've seen mention of the GOP anti Obama congressional strategy, and have blogged about it before. It is staggering for a liberal democracy, often described with terms like unconstitutional, treasonous, and anti-democratic.

Previously I have satirically compared the GOP to the Taliban for its misogynistic anti-choice legislation. In a move that could hardly be expect One GOP representative has compared themselves to the Taliban, I shi*t you not.

Back on January 20, 2009, President Obama was attending his inauguration ceremony, while just kilometres away, in a Washington eatery, 12 leading GOP representatives including Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and GOP strategy wonk Frank Luntz. In that meeting the question was what to do about the new president. The answer they came upwith was block everything, filibuster like their pension depends on it and obstruct like the sewer was backing up.

According to Pete Sessions (R) the meeting used the Taliban as an example.

Taliban Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. Insurgency  is the way they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. 

And these Taliban - is  an example of how you go about to change a person from their messaging to their operation to their frontline  message. And we need to understand that Insurgency may be required when [dealing with] the other side.

So far the insurgency has meant that congress has pass just 2 bills of consequence, the Violence Against Women Act, and Sandy disaster relief but only after great difficulty and failed votes. Other staggeringly pressing bills include the size of steel blanks for commemorative coins and failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  Congress has not been this ineffective since the 1940s.

The goal of this strategy is to the President look like a "lame duck" president, and if some some of the Sodahead conversations I've had are anything to go by, some are falling for it.

What ever happened to defending the constitution from it enemies foreign and domestic. In minds of the tea party President Blackular is the goosestepping tyrannical enemy. Well, with an extraordinary admission above, when is the Tea party Caucus undergoing extraordinary rendition? Any minute now the IRS will break down there doors and demand they fill forms to show there 501(c)4 charitable groups really are charitable and not just political groups. Oh, wait they asked that of of groups regardless of political affiliation and the only group denied 501(c)4 status was aligned with the Democrats. And no doors were broken.

The GOP strategy is no more sophisticated than a grumpy four year old at preschool who doesn't want to play with the new kid in group. Is it anti democratic, certainly they are usurping the will of the people by the popular vote. Is it treason? Well they have admitted their priority is not the welfare of the American nation.

Why aren't Americans furious? Decades of drama too exhausting perhaps or perhaps many are too poor to be able to afford to express dissent. At least some call it the beauty of neo-liberal economics - bloody nightmare that it is. At least Egypt offers an example.