A House Divided Against Itself.....Can't Do Much of Anything

Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We have a worse situation now. Under GOP management, the House of Representatives is so divided against itself it cannot do much of anything. Except destroy the country. (More on that shortly.)

Let's start where the House Republican majority is right now. It cannot even pick a Speaker! It's driven John Boehner out and, as of this week, has scared Kevin McCarthy out of trying for the job. (Kevin McCarthy)

The House GOP is so divided within itself that we don't really have a Congress anymore. The House is simply not functioning, and without it the Senate is virtually a nothing. Face it! Other than approving treaties and appointments, the Senate can't do anything alone. It certainly can't pass laws or touch the purse strings. Spending and getting are the sole province of the House. If the House doesn't function, neither does the Senate, and there's no Congress.

And so we teeter along on two crutches and no legs, headed toward the specter of not raising the debt ceiling next month and thereby plunging the entire world into economic chaos.  Next comes the December deadline for passing a budget and keeping the government open. Of course, if we have plunged the whole world into economic disaster in November, maybe we should just let the government disappear in December.

Why are the feuding House Republicans so fraught with froth and foaming at the mouth? The 40 hard-core rightist members want their group to run the House. They don't want a Speaker with any power, nor do they want any other leadership doing its job. They want control themselves. No captain on their ship! They want "a principle-based, member-driven Congress." This phrase, so innocuous on its surface, actually means a bare-knuckle free-for-all. There will be no Speaker having the power to move the nation's business in an orderly fashion. Without a Speaker, getting anything done will be like herding cats. Except there won't be anyone trying to herd the cats! Just cats!

Well, you say, so what? Let the GOP destroy itself. Let the people see a House which does NOT represent the people, has no leaders, and is run by nonsense. That's certainly what it would be.

But it's worse than a disgusting spectacle.  A free-for-all by this House means not only chaos but tyranny by a minority.

Get this straight. This so-called House of Representatives does NOT represent the American people. It has a phony majority of Republicans. The Democrats running for the House in 2014 tallied ONE MILLION MORE votes than did the GOP candidates. But the gerrymandering done by the GOP after the 2010 census gave a lot of House representation to comparatively empty land. Thus we end up with a House of Representatives that doesn't represent a majority.

We have lost our grounding in the most fundamental Constitutional principle of all: government by the majority.

Compounding this nastiness is the fact that the minority party now in charge is being run by a minority within it. A mere FORTY people are now largely in control of this country and our government. On top of that they are mostly whackos and racists out of the South.(Graphic The Power of the Hard-Line Republicans in the Race for House Speaker) They don't want a government. They have repeatedly said they want to get rid of the government. What in the world is this!

Well, my friends, none may dare call it treason, but I will.

Our government has been taken over by a small segment that deprives us of constitutionally based representation, and this group is avowedly set on destroying our government. Further, in its ignorance and blind ideology it is set on a course that will not only destroy our government but will casually take down the world economy on its journey to craziness.

John Boehner, PLEASE STAY! Do not desert our poor country. After you, comes the deluge.

As for the rest of us, what in the hell are we going to do about the distorted map of Congressional districts that has brought us to this chasm? Can we hold together for another 5 years until the next census? Can we get sanity back into enough state legislatures so that we have honest, fair representation again.

God help us, I hope so.

Meantime I can't snicker at the self-destructive shenanigans of the House GOP.  Because they are going to destroy us along with them. Even their list of "maybes" for House Speaker is discouraging.
 (http://nyti.ms/1KGUGbZ)

What Lincoln called "the last great hope of humanity" may be about to die.