Washington, D.C. – Will Republicans or President Obama pay the political price for the government shutdown? There is no telling today. But lose no patience, a credible answer is only a month away.
On November 5, voters in Virginia will elect a new governor. By their choice, I think, they will show either Obama as the goat chewing up their economy or congressional Republicans as the architects of their misfortune.
Virginia is the state that profits most from the enormous Pentagon spending on every aspect of military preparedness. In Northern Virginia, defence industries and installations provide thousands of jobs, none of them at low wages.
Where the region is cheek to cheek with Washington Beltway Bandits--and not carjackers--they are powerful corporations who together with the Pentagon form the industrial-military complex.
The government shutdown has sent men and women home to mind the kids on day one. They get no paychecks and many must wonder what comes next. This much can be expected: If the shutdown continues people hurt by it will want to hit back. If the impasse results in permanent job losses and reclassifications of full time jobs with health insurance and paid holidays to 28-hour max part time existence, it will be a miracle if voters don’t send the message to the culprit.
The message will carry a cost if Obama gets in the form of a Democrat’s failed try for the governorship of a state now regarded as the bellwether for the 2016 presidential elections.
If a Republican gets the nod in the Old Dominion it will be a sign that there is a future for a party split by strife between dismissive Tea Party populists and their Libertarian partners on one side and traditional Republican lawmakers on the other.
It is worth mentioning at this point that the regular Republicans have 28 years in the White House their credit between 1968 and 2010. They also ended the unbroken 40 years Democrat rule of the House of Representatives in 1995.
A win in Virginia would, I think, signal that the GOP – Grand Old Party, has a future despite the factional mayhem killing it now – to Obama’s and every Democrat’s glee.
Let me gag about the end of politics as we know it, the end of American Democracy and the tyranny of losers.
These pained complaints and dire warnings come from the Obama White House and its unfailing echo chambers in the media.
Well, I’ll be… Wasn’t it only a decade ago when Democrats and their media helpers obstructed, undermined and sought to torpedo President George W. Bush?
And as the blame barrage deafens the ears the usual suspects in the MSM can’t gin up enough ersatz sorrow and shed enough crocodile tears for the Grand Old Party’s pitiful condition.
So hypocritical is the noise that I can imagine the New York Times editorial board wailing 'what will we do, heavens, what will we do' without the loyal opposition in Congress.
The sham resembles nothing so much as a pleasure palace run by political libertines in robes where small “c” conservatives are ill at ease, capital “C” Conservatives demand all the house can offer, and Democrats collect the wages of sin.
Liberty is like apple pie--always good, protected by the mantle of core values. It is a beautiful state to strive for, to reach and to grasp. The only trouble is that liberty is a demanding mistress insisting on respect and restraint.
In Washington there is faint respect for the intelligence of the common man (sorry, pc lovers) and only contempt for political opponents.
Obama is the exquisite my-way-or-the-highway president. His idea of bipartisanship with Republicans is something like ‘disarm, obey, and shut up.’
Regrettably, it isn’t much better in the house Republicans have built. The old guard may be slow to move and the Tea Party faction knows what it knows and will defend it to the last remnant of power Republicans still have in their hands.
And, while I am at it, it doesn’t matter who messed up with the government shutdown, the blame for any real damage to ordinary people and the American economy will fall on Republicans.
I will go further: So far, Obama snookered the Republicans. He got them on the defensive.
Might there be some midterm election strategy here? What a naïve question. Everything Obama has done and intends to do is looked at through the election calendar lens.
Just think of the voter-appeal decisions since his first inauguration in January 2009. From national health insurance in place before his reelection run in 2012, to the pullout from Iraq without safeguarding what had been won in six years of bloody fighting, lives lost and trillions of dollars to his failure of leadership in Benghazi past the 2012 election date.
Had he not had the MSM killing the death of the United States ambassador and three more Americans with silence, Obama might have been a one-termer.
The political stakes now are profound but may be decided on the mundane matter of jobs lost in an economy turning into a country of part-time employment and sinking expectations.
This a legacy Obama may leave. Yes, there is strife and deep trouble in governance. But no, it is not the Republicans who govern.
Bogdan Kipling is veteran Canadian journalist in Washington.
Originally posted to the U.S. capital in the early 1970s by Financial Times of Canada, he is now commenting on his eighth presidency of the United States and on international affairs.
Bogdan Kipling is a member of the House and Senate Press Galleries.
