Something Wicked This Way Comes

Back in 2011, after the TEA Party wave handed Republicans control of the US House of Representatives, Michael Tomasky of The Guardian prophetically wrote :

Having taken control of the House of Representatives as of tomorrow, Republicans now have to govern. They have to do things like make a budget. And not just a fake budget, like in a campaign. A real budget, that adds up, more or less. They have to negotiate with a Senate still in Democratic hands over the final shape of appropriations to the various federal agencies. All that sounds suspiciously like hard work. And Washington Republicans, for all their thumpety-thump rhetoric about hard work and personal initiative and so on, are largely lazy and unserious people. They won't do the work, and in two years, it will show.

Well.  Here we are, two years later and Republican members of the "do-nothing" Congress, confident of being rewarded for their nothingness with an expanded majority in the upcoming mid-term elections, tell us they are anxious to prove that they are "ready to govern."

That strikes me as a hard sell, but here's Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) leading the pep rally, a week before going home for a month to face his constituents:

People didn’t put us out here to say no. They put us here to govern.  It’s something that we have to go for and have to do to show the American people we can solve big problems.

Perhaps tackling "big problems" is a bit ambitious, with Congress' approval rating at 15%. Eighty five per cent of the American people would be grateful if Congress could demonstrate an ability to solve any problem -- large or small.  And, in fact, House Republicans went home to their districts with little to show for their term.  Unless, of course, we count filing their preposterous lawsuit against the president for governing too much.

Keep going . . .