Too Much Trouble

by digby

Here’s a video mash-up of the Republicans’ inexplicable decision to obstruct the extension of unemployment benefits. (And it is the Republicans, not just Jim Bunning, because he had Bob Corker waiting in the wings to take over in case he needed to leave the room. They could have stopped it.)

I also don’t understand why the Democrats didn’t make Bunning and Corker put their bladders where their mouths are and force them to keep running this stunt all week-end if they had to. Here you have the Republicans using parliamentary tricks to withhold unemployment benefits in the middle of a vicious recession. Would that not be worth highlighting just a bit to illustrate that the Republicans are so ideologically rigid that they would compromise average citizens’ actual survival just to make a point?

I guess not. They caved and adjourned. They are allowing the benefits to expire, which will require the states to go through all kinds of hoops to reinstate them if they end up voting for it next Tuesday.

The Democrats were evidently afraid of making the Senate look like it couldn’t get anything done and Bunning is a nut so why fight it? And that’s the problem. They had an opportunity to demagogue the living hell out of uncaring Republican parsimony in this time of great financial need and they didn’t do it. I guess they figure it’s better to let the other side continue convince the people that long term deficit projections are what’s causing them to lose everything. It’s less trouble. Plus they were tired.

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