Hermetically sealed self-delusion

I read an interesting act the other day.  Not only did Barack Obama and the Democratic senators score more of the popular vote to the tune of several million or more voters, House Democrats also had one and a half million more people vote for them than for House Republicans.  Yet because of the creation of ‘rotten boroughs’ in states controlled by local Republican legislatures, in the national House, the Republicans still hold a majority and, more importantly, the position of Speaker, who alone decides whether and when to bring a bill to be voted upon.  This creates the position where many Republicans have fear only from the right of them.  John Boehner claimed on a bad night for the Republicans in November 2012, that his party also had a mandate, but the popular figures show that the GOP really does not. 

There is talk of immigration reform and a farm bill but a federal commission to fix the borders into something which, hey, is representative is a must.  States’ rights have no place when it concerns electing people who wish to make representations to the federal government and who take decisions that affect the whole country.  But maybe the Democrats will not implement it until a right-wing Supreme Court retires (unlikely until at least 2017) or dies, fearful of the panel dividing along political lines, 5-4, like they did in 2000 to deny Al Gore his rightful victory, because the work of such a commission would be legally challenged by the GOP.

One can only hope that the Democrats can hoover up the seats of moderate Republicans politicians in the mid-terms who, ironically, they can work with, just so the role of Speaker can be wrested back.  Raúl Labrador, a Republican congressman from Idaho claimed “I think what [Obama] has done over the past two and a half weeks – he's trying to destroy the Republican party.”  It wasn’t the president who imposed demands for standard legislative procedures as funding the federal government or raising the debt ceiling (the equivalent of doing what the Republicans were doing, as Peter Foster pointed out, would have been to tie gun control to these votes – Obama didn’t).  In reality, Obama doesn’t need to destroy the Republicans - due to their zeal for living in a fantasy world of ideological purity, the GOP is doing a fine job of that by itself.