House Republicans have moved off the simple statement that they don’t have to bring any bill up for a vote that they don’t want to, which is true – absent a successful ‘discharge petition’. So now they’re stuck on this point that a ‘clean’ continuing resolution can’t pass the House. There are pretty good reasons to believe that is not true. But the bravado is totally belied by the fact that they’re afraid to bring it up for a vote.
Ridiculousness is a seriously devalued commodity in Washington these days. But this is one of those claims that is so preposterous that I’m not sure it can hold as an argument. It brings into increasingly sharp relief that the root of the national crisis is the Tea Party factions hold on the House GOP conference and thus the House and thus, alas, the entire country.
If only Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was alive to tell this story.
TPM Reader PP:
I’m sure this isn’t a perspective lost on anyone, but has anyone asked the reps who want to breach the debt limit because it won’t be such a big deal why they think it is that they have such a great tool of leverage for extracting things with?
It seems that they want to have it both ways: They want the debt ceiling issue to be some hugely important thing to avoid in order to be able to get someone they would never ever be able to get by normal means, but they then want it to be “no big deal!” so they aren’t to be painted as people willing to light our country on fire.
