The Genealogy of a Mule
Here’s one of the floaters in the swirling bowl of Republican politics:
WASHINGTON - Scrambling to respond to the public outcry about gas prices, Senate Republicans want to send taxpayers a $100 rebate check to help ease some of the pain at the pump.
But if GOP leaders stick with their strategy of packaging this proposal with a provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife to oil drilling, they will ensure the bill will face a bitter fight for survival.
Am I getting this right? The Republican leadership are proposing a government hand-out (i.e., a Democratic-style bribe) that would be contingent upon a provision to open up the ANWR? What the fuck are they doing? Did they mean for this to be made public?
Let us metaphoricize.
The donkey of Democratic resistance to drilling in the ANWR is to be coupled with the horse of Republican fiscal conservatism? (Well, you know, a rebate is a tax cut. Sorta.)
Uh, okay. That means that not only would such a bill fail, but it would fail in a way that would expose most starkly the stupidity of the idea that drilling the ANWR is a short-term or even long-term solution to anything. Now, maybe some Republican consultant told Frist and the other idiots that forcing the Democrats to once again resist drilling among the caribou would be a good way of putting the domestic oil onus on them, but that isn’t how it’s going to work. Instead, what will be plain (besides the illogic of ANWR drilling equating to lower gas prices this summer) is that Republicans don’t really want to send those rebate checks, after all, but merely wish to be seen to be trying to stick up for the little guy. Which is transparent nonsense.
The shitheadedness appalls, you know. I have no idea who these people are. It’s almost like the two major parties worked a deal out once a long time ago to occasionally swap implosions.
