Government Shutdown...political planning.

I've been following the current budget process in congress (boring crap I assure you) and I've come to a conclusion recently. The current budget problem started the moment the Democrats saw the writing on the wall in the last election cycle. When it became clear that they would retain the Senate but lose the House they decided to punt on the budget. Why? For the political benefit of a Government Shutdown. How does this benefit the Democrats? The clear answer is that the Democrats stand the most to gain by painting the new budget cutting Congress as socially uncompromising and that they are willing to "starve" people in order to cut the budget. Democrats are counting on people to be dependent on Government programs so that they can leverage that for votes in the next election season. They are suggesting the funding Planned Parenthood is more important than paying our troops all while saying that Republicans are willing to let our troops go unpaid just to cut funding to NPR. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Certainly there should be cuts to every program. But the Democrats aren't willing to let the bastions of progressivism to get cut and so they will notch as many political points as they can by making the "unreasonable" Republican's out to be the "meanies" that don't want women to have breast exams. Does anyone really believe that any Republican doesn't want women to get screened for cancer? While I'm willing to concede that there are a lot of Republican's that would like to see liberal programs eliminated (PBS, NPR, Planned Parenthood, etc) to suggest that they want to see women die from breast cancer is hyperbole bordering on insanity. In the end the Republican's will be forced to break down politically because they care too much...not just about their political futures, but about the people that are suffering from the inaction that the Democrats calculated from last year. They calculated that they would gain more support for their "causes" by showing the "misers" as being heartless and willing to let VA hospitals shut down to save a couple billion dollars. They would show that they, the Democrats, are more caring and want to spend more on the "needy" than the Republicans, who are heartless and want suffering for the "little guy" and more money for the "nasty corporations" that cause all the problems in the world (that also employ the little guy...but you won't hear that).
Right now I want the Republicans to give in to the Democrats and start the battle for the 2012 budget today. I want them to fight for deep, punishing, painful, cuts to EVERY program. Every program means, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaide, Military (Defense), social programs, foreign aide, everything. I'm also an advocate for dropping EVERY loophole available to corporations and then cut their tax rate so there's no incentive to cheat, if they know they'll have to pay 25%, period, no exceptions, rather than being subject to 30-60% taxes on their profits with the potential to dodge that if they contribute to this fund or hide this much income, or give away that much product etc., then perhaps the end result will be more revenue for our Government.
So in conclusion to an extraordinarily long post I'll say this...Republicans in Congress...Stand Down...and then  grab your boot straps and get to work on next years budget and focus on winning the Senate and Whitehouse back. Don't let political planning on the part of Democrats prevent you from accomplishing that which you were elected to accomplish.

To see how ridiculous this is getting here's a couple links.
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/08/democrat-republicans-against-abortion-came-to-kill-women/
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/07/facebook-event-lets-dump-trash-at-boehners-pad/

They Vote then Vault

Can you say AWESOME!?  I of course mean that in the most sarcastic way possible. Bart Stupak the infamous congressman that "almost" blocked the Healthcare Reform Bill before actually passing the bill. His leaving office puts the Democrats in an awkward position to try and fill his position, a position with a pretty conservative core already.  This is the type of thing that the Democrats are going to have a hard time with in a lot of the races this year.  Of course the other issue at hand is that the Republicans also need to convince Tea-Party folk that they are worthy of their vote.  Not an easy task for incumbent Republican's that helped Bush spend us into a debt that could have been managed much better.  I have nothing in particular against Stupak.  In fact I sort of admire his hard headed style over the run-up to the healthcare vote.  His stance on abortion has been consistent until now and given the pressure to pass from Nancy Pelosi and others it was impressive for him to last as long as he has.  This may be a sign of things to come as polls indicate the hard battles associated with the mid-term elections.  Republican's, if they are smart, will put people on the ballot with zero association with the big spending of the last administration and people that are ready to get America out of debt.  Of course getting people to understand that the only way for that to happen is to cut programs completely.  If you can put a candidate that can communicate the strength of the individual and negate the need of government to provide for them and get people excited about it then you'll have the ideal candidate.  This is the time for "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" rhetoric.  That is what the Healthcare issue is really about.  The candidate that emphasizes personal responsibility and challenges his constituents to be personally responsible for their own lives and not dependent on others is the candidate that will win the Tea Party and very likely the election.

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• Rep. Bart Stupak won't seek re-election (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Stupak's Exit: How Bad An Omen For Dems? (swampland.blogs.time.com)