Even Republicans know that the current occupant of the white House is a disaster who is endangering the entire country – and they’re willing to talk about it. Privately.

And at least some Republicans are willing to admit publicly what we all know – Senator Bob Corker, Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, for instance, who has likened the White House to “adult day care,” warning us that if something isn’t done, we’re headed for WWIII. Corker, of course, won’t be running for office and so doesn’t have to fear a primary challenge from the rampaging romper room wing of the GOP, so he has a get out of jail free card when he goes off on the colossal mistake that the Republican Party made in 2016.

Among the Republicans who can’t be bothered to do something to save us from the arrogant imbecile that they, along with the Russians and the “alt-right,” put in the White House is our own GOP Senator Roy Blunt whose response to Bob Corker’s cri de coeur was an exercise in bland fatuousness:

It’s an unfortunate exchange … I would like to see this end,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in the Capitol on Tuesday, adding that he does not, in fact, believe the White House is an adult day care center. “I would encourage them both to stop what they’re doing and get focused on what we need to be doing.”

I despair – “get focused on what we need to be doing,” he says. Like that’s going to happen. And like Blunt doesn’t know that it isn’t going to happen.

But, hey, what Blunt thinks “we need to be doing” is likely gonna hurt the rest of us big time – the guy’s a shill for the big money boys who put Trump in office so he could pack the courts in their favor. The fact that Trump’s crazy spills over to the rest of the GOP, effectively incapacitating their legislative agenda, is probably the silver lining to the Trump Cloud.

Of course, if or when the Trump cloud becomes a mushroom cloud, it isn’t going to make much difference.

*Last sentence of penultimate paragraph sightly revised for clarity (10:51 am, 10/12/2017).

From The Hill:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Tuesday introduced legislation meant to cap Washington spending that she said could lead to her defeat in 2012.

Damn straight it could lead to her defeat – although she’s probably only saying so in order to draw a distinction in the minds of her chosen people in the mushy center between her ostensible moderation and those dangerous socialists the Tea Party’s been screeching about – you know, the Democrats.

A socialist McCaskill certainly isn’t. What she is, though, is a panderer who is willing to validate a false GOP narrative and put our economic recovery and our social safety net at risk in the service of what Think Progress dubs a “lazy, unrealistic plan to reduce government spending.” Partnering this time with Bob Corker (R-TN), McCaskill is proposing to limit spending to 20.6%  of GDP which would force “draconian cuts in Social Security and Medicare.” It would treat all government programs regardless of their value equally, and pinch the funding of the good as well as the bad down to insupportable levels.

McCaskill’s embrace of the GOP budget-cutting, deficit-fighting narrative, which no less authority than The Economist describes as “senseless,” reinforces dangerous right wing efforts to divert our attention away from what really needs to be done to insure our future prosperity. As Senator Chuck Shumer (D-N.Y.) has argued, the road down which these deficit peacocks are taking us could very well push us into the depression we have so far avoided.

All of which brings us to the question of what we, as Democrats, actually get from McCaskill. She has some modest achievements. Her efforts to eliminate fraud and waste in the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction comes to mind, although one might be forgiven for suggesting that here, as elsewhere, McCaskill is just trying to outdo the Republicans at their own game. The only vote she has taken that I can think of off-hand that has taken some guts is her vote for the Affordable Care Act – although her hedging, hemming and hawing about the public option also comes to mind when that topic is raised.

On almost every other major issue that I can think of, McCaskill might as well have been a member of the GOP. She sold us out on FISA, helped kill climate change legislation, and when it came to reforming a dysfunctional senate, her efforts to end secret  holds don’t amount to a hill of beans when one considers the fact that she voted against allowing a simple majority to shut down a filibuster.

I have always thought that no matter how poor a Democrat our Senator is, it is worthwhile to support McCaskill when she is the party’s candidate because one is supporting the party as a whole through her. When the Democratic party is in the majority, it wields more power and, as a group, is capable of far more progressive action than we can expect to see from our congresswoman by herself.  However, when, with this latest proposal, she put herself on the side of those who would senselessly mindlessly cut Social Security benefits, she may have stepped over an important line. I begin to think that if, in McCaskill’s role as a Senator, she does so little to make things better and so much to make things worse, why bother about her at all?

Right now, for me, the only thing that is keeping Senator McCaskill even potentially relevant is the GOP fun-house line-up that is assembling to challenge her in 2012. The idea of a shameless liar like Ed Martin taking a seat in Washington is almost too much to bear, no matter what a waste of space Senator McCaskill has proven to be. Nevertheless, it’s possible I’ll develop a much thicker skin if the McCaskill/Corker budget cap becomes the law of the land.

BONUS:  The Atlantic takes on McCaskill in The Cynical Politics of Claire McCaskill’s Deficit Plan. She really ought to walk this back – if she can. Even deficit hawks know McCaskill/Corker is bad pollicy.