The GOP House Speaker, John Boehner says the shutdown crisis “isn’t some damn game,” but there’s no doubt that the Republicans in Congress are indeed playing a game, and a very dangerous game it is. And what’s worse, Republican leaders are aware that what they are doing is suicidal as far as their party is concerned and homicidal as far as the nation goes. It’s happening because of a few yeast-brained fools who think that they’re making a grand stand for principles that even they are hard put to describe in meaningful terms. E. J. Dionne puts it perfectly; it’s “the Seinfeld Shutdown: It’s about absolutely nothing, at least where substance is concerned.”

How, you may be forgiven for asking, can responsible legislators lead the country into disaster to satisfy continually shifting and politically undigestable demands? The answer: consider the people doing the demanding. And you don’t have to go far to do it since we have here in Missouri more than a few legislators that suffer from the same delusions as the would-be leaders of the attempted GOP coup d’état in Washington D.C.

Let’s start with state Senator Ed Emery (R-31), who exemplifies the constitutional fetish common to so many GOP legislators who were agitating for the shutdown. To give you an idea about how bad it is, Emery holds that the vetoed gun bill, HB436, widely deemed by legal experts to have egregiously violated the Constitution, was “the most constitutional bill this year, not just in Missouri’s Legislature, but in any state.” Not surprisingly, he also insists that despite the contrary opinion of the Supreme Court, Obamacare is not only unconstitutional, but constitutes an overweening threat to God and Country:

One need know little about the origins and history of America and the origins and history of Obamacare to know that this fight is not about the survival of Obamacare or of a political party, it is about the survival of the Republic. …

I’m willing to bet that this poor schmuck, like plenty of the D.C. Tea Party contingent, really believes this sort of tripe. It’s based on an attitude that views the Constitution as a magical, quasi-religious icon that codifies the deepest wishes of ignorantly genuflecting true believers, rather than a mental construct that has to be intellectually apprehended. How else could Senator Emery ignore the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare? Garrett Epps  points out some of the most common rightwing Constitutional errors and identifies some purely non-existent passages and words that are commonly bandied about by these folks, all of  which allow them, in Epps words, to wave the Constitution “about like great-grandpa’s Confederate cavalry sword to demonstrate that we can’t have health care, or environmental protection, or whatever other policy they oppose today.”  

Not surprisingly, you get a heaping serving of the stupid when you leaven this faux-constitutional fervor with the simplistic economic cliches current on the right – beautifully exemplified by state Rep. Mike Kelley (R-126), who baldly states that “the federal government is shutdown today and the last few days because it’s out of money!” That, of course, is untrue in general terms, and untrue when it comes to the claim that we cannot afford Obamacare; in fact, repealing Obamacare would actually increase the deficit.

So what we’re confronted with are a gang of none-too-bright legislators with a poor grasp of economics, tons of inbred prejudices, and heroic yearnings focused on a poorly digested understanding of the Constitution. In short, ripe for plucking.

And plucked they have been, as the the New York Times made clear in a recent article on the evolution of the shutdown which traces its roots to months of planning on the part of rightwing groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Action for America and others, all generously funded by titans of industry like the Koch brothers, and happily steering the equally dim-witted federal analogues of Emery and Kelley into our current disaster. The goal? To destroy any legislation that would slow progress towards a United States of America that more closely resembles those third-world, free-market paradises where many of these “job-creators” have already gone to do their low-cost creating.  

Remember Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the infamous Koch founded and funded organization that, among other achievements, got the Tea Party organized and on track? Want to know just which legislators in Missouri are most in tune with AFP goals? Well, you need wait no longer. The AFP has just issued a scorecard for the 112th Congress.  The grades received by Missouri legislators, listed below (name, party and grade), is about what one would expect:

Roy Blunt (R): B

Claire McCaskill (D): D

Todd Akin (R): A+          

Russ Carnahan (D): F                          

Wm. Lacy Clay (D): F

Emanuel Cleaver (D): D-  

Jo Ann Emerson (R) B      

Sam Graves (R): B        

Vicky Hartzler (R): B  

Billy Long (R): B  

Blaine Leutkemeyer (R): B

If you want a vote breakdown, check out AmericansforProsperity.org/Scorcard. According to the DailyKos’ Meteor Blades:

AFP chose to grade congressmembers based on their votes on repealing President Obama’s new healthcare law, blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, supporting the demolition document known as the Paul Ryan budget, ending ethanol subsidies and several Congressional Review Act resolutions as well as the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.

This rationale explains just why Republicans get high marks and Democrats get low marks – as a progressive, I’d be very disturbed if any Democrats scored higher than they did. That said, I do have to admit that I was surprised that most of Missouri’s GOP legislators can’t get better than B grades – only uber-winger Akin qualifies for an A grade (A+ actually). They sure talk a good game and one would have expected that they would reap a bigger reward. Perhaps ethanol subsides plays a role in their scores? Also of interest is the fact that no matter how far right she tries to list, poor Claire McCaskill can’t do better than a D. I would have pegged her at C- (for centrist wannabe) myself – if only because of her efforts on behalf of Big Coal.

Yesterday I was chatting with a nurse who was setting me up for a minor procedure at a local hospital.  She said she was originally from Oklahoma and still had family there.  So I used that opening to mention the drought, the heat wave and climate change.  Every chance I get I bring up the odd coincidence that Texas and Oklahoma are getting the worst climate related damage since the dust bowl days and, as it happens, the Congressmen from Oklahoma and Texas are the ones who do the bidding of the “global warming hoax” beneficiaries.  Of course, they owe their political careers to oil barons, so what else can they say about the polar ice cap melting other than it’s a “hoax”?

I generalized that the men in Congress have done a lot of damage to all of us hoping the nurse would agree.  And she did.

Then she said, “And how about that president of ours?  He won’t even say the pledge of allegiance, and, when he does, he uses the wrong hand.”

OMG, how do we counteract simplistic thinking like that?  And this is an RN who had to have some post high school education.  She seemed bright and alert, good at her job and someone who would NOT be taken in by the lies generated by American Crossroads, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and all the “defeat Obama whatever the cost” crowd.

Yet here she was – miss middle America. Totally convinced that the President of the United States won’t say the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America.   How can anyone juggle those two things cognitively?

I took a deep breath and told her that the photo online a few months ago was a fake.  I explained that nowadays anyone clever enough can make a fake photo or video.  She agreed that that was possible but didn’t seem to apply that piece of information to the Obama Left Hand Pledge photo.

Not being sure if she was even open for information that might mess up her hard core dislike of the President, I explained that photos like that are made up by people who hate Obama because he is trying to protect programs like Social Security and Medicare, and those people want to destroy those programs.  HELLO?  Medicare?  Hospital?  Nurse?   Income?

I don’t know what else to do but keep telling the truth about the Obama haters and sharing facts about what is going on.  Truth? Facts? No thanks, it’s time for my coffee break.  Have a nice day.  

According to the Washington Post, Carl Rove’s American Crossroads paid $4,120,921 to help buy Roy Blunt’s Senate seat. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by comparison, pumped a measly $1,110,461 into Missouri to help their pal Roy. Nothing like buying a known commodity, I guess.

Of course Blunt also owes the Koch brothers a big debt; if their AFP hadn’t fanned the Tea Party bonfires, it would have been much rougher going. From one point of view, Blunt’s race was the proof of the pudding when it comes to the preferred way to use the Tea Party. Actual Tea Party candidates who won their primaries mostly crashed and burned (think Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle and Joe Miller), proving that there is actually a limit on how many Americans will tolerate pure stupidity; but the cadres did make excellent foot soldiers for the good ol’ boys of the corporate GOP and helped to create the required media narrative.

Addendum:  I forgot to add our own Ed Martin’s name to the list of defeated Tea Party candidates – perhaps because he always struck me as a more of a political opportunist using the Tea Party for camouflage than the real thing.  He not only crashed and burned, but he seems determined to make a total ass out of himself now that the damage is done.