Now, with Speaker Boehner having scheduled a vote on the tea party’s signature issue, repealing the Affordable Care Act, a new poll finds that public support for the repeal has dropped to just 25 percent.
But first, here’s the week that was:
Day 1 – Wednesday, Jan. 5
Two experienced GOP House members, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas and returning Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, skipped the House swearing-in ceremony to attend an apparently illegal fundraiser in the Capitol Building — a fact that did not stop them from improperly, if not illegally and certainly unconstitutionally, voting on six roll-call votes.
Day 2 – Thursday, Jan. 6
During their gimmicky reading of the Constitution in the House, Republicans omitted sections about slavery and other issues that might make their racist tea bagger base uncomfortable. And then GOP-tea bagger Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, who had been chosen to facilitate the reading on Wednesday, had his cred as a constitutionalist destroyed in an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, first a birther in the House gallery, Theresa Cao, interrupted the reading of the section of the Constitution that laid out the qualifications to be president — a small irony because, in May 2009, emcee Rep. Goodlatte had been the first co-sponsor of the House “birther bill.”
But what really stepped on whatever good news Republicans hoped to get out of the reading came later when it was revealed that Goodlatte had not been following along in the reading and failed to notice when several sections were omitted. The missing sections were hastily read out of sequence at the end.
Finally, the reading of the Constitution reportedly cost about $1 million, which will presumably be borrowed from communist China.
Day 4 – Saturday, Jan. 8
After nothing but bad press on Wednesday and Thursday, Speaker Boehner and his boys must have been relieved to send everyone home on Friday. But then, just after 10 a.m. on Saturday in Tucson, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents were attacked by crazed gunman who killed six and wounded 13, including the congresswoman.
The incompetent amateurs who run tea bagger queen Sarah Palin’s operations went into overdrive. First, they too quickly issued “sincere condolences” for Rep. Giffords based on an erroneous report on Fox that Giffords died. Next they scrubbed the website that centered on Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” map.
Within hours of the shooting, top Team Palin amateur Rebecca Mansour went on right-wing propaganda radio to test a new lie — those weren’t crosshairs on the map, they were surveyor’s marks. This despite the fact that Palin herself had referred to it as her “bullseye map.”
Day 6 – Monday, Jan. 10
The president called for a moment of silence in Washington on Monday, but Glenn Beck — whose vitriolic rhetoric has driven a madman or two to attack liberals — made sure his show was on commercial break when the solemn moment came. When he returned from the commercial, Beck mocked the moment of silence as a photo op.
Also on Monday, after claiming that he never uses violent rhetoric — a claim that is debunked here — Glenn Beck put a message on his homepage, “We must stand together against all violence.” Problem was, it appeared against a background image of Beck holding a semiautomatic pistol.
Day 7 – Tuesday, Jan. 11
In a desperate attempt to get Republicans off defense, Rush Limbaugh went on the attack, claiming that “What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He’s sitting there in jail. He knows what’s going on, he knows that… the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he’s just a victim.”
Day 8 – Wednesday, Jan. 12
In a foolish and, again, amateurish effort to compete with Pres. Obama’s speech at the Tucson memorial for the shooting victims, Palin released an eight-minute video diatribe against her critics and uses the ancient anti-Semitic phrase “blood libel” to cast herself as victim in the tragedy.
That same day, Speaker Boehner declined an invitation to travel with the president on Air Force One to Tucson for the memorial. Instead, Boehner, who is known in the capitol as a boozer, schmoozer and golfer, attended Republican fundraiser cocktail party in Maryland.
The poll showing just 25 percent of voters in support of repealing health care is just more bad news for hapless Republicans. That one in four figure is a familiar percentage in American politics. It’s roughly the same share of voter who approved of George Bush’s handling of his job on the day he left office. Similarly, about a quarter of Americans still approved of Richard Nixon on the day he resigned in order to avoid being frog-marched out of the White House. More to the point, of course, it’s roughly the same percentage of Americans who self-identify as tea party-ites.
Even among Republicans, support for repeal has dropped by double digits, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now. And 43 percent of all respondents say they want the law to do more, a factor seen consistently in polling since the bill passed last spring.
Yes, it’s way too soon to declare that voters are experiencing a giant case of buyers’ remorse, but what Republicans have shown in the short time they have been in power is that they learned nothing from their failures during the Bush era or during their brief timeout in the wilderness.
Drunken Bum boehner will projectile vomit in the house.
Jon Ponder? you have seen it all for what it is. No more no less. Who could only but a select few really hope that there was going to be something different coming out of a new republican power grab based on lies and distortions over the whole range of republican mouth pieces? You expected different. lol Some say history has a way of repeating itself. Hopefully this isn’t the repeat of the the not to distant past that finds us in all this turmoil. We would have to name it “re-run” because it would be really be bad to call it history making.
john boehner will befoul himself while on the house floor.