The assumption the right wing appears to have made is that anyone with an iota of intelligence wouldn’t vote for them anyway.

Watching teabaggers at town hall meetings shouting that they want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare, it’s hard to disagree that being unglued seems to be a large part of right wing credentials.

The massive obstructionism that the right has taken as its ploy against any representation of the public interest in government has become so pervasive that it has included minority party delays of, thus far, 300 hours added to the Senate’s time to get its work done. Cloture votes drag floor sessions into long sessions of unneeded work, and of course run up the costs of staffing and general operations which is a total waste of public funds. Funds which are now supplied by Continuing Resolutions because the right wing has stopped the work necessary to pass appropriations.

Mindless obstruction serves no purpose, and has been employed even against bills the minority actually supports.

Republicans Forced Cloture Vote on Food and Drug Administration Overhaul – Bill Passed With No Republicans Opposing It.

Republicans forced a cloture vote on the Kennedy Substitute Amendment which became the basis for the FDA Overhaul bill. The bill passed the Senate 93-1 with no Republicans opposing the bill. [Senate Vote #152, S. 1082, 5/7/07; Senate Vote #157, S. 1082, 5/9/07]

…

Cloture Votes on Bipartisan and Non-Controversial Bills Have Forced More Than 300 Hours of Additional Debate. In addition to the time spent debating and voting for cloture on these bipartisan and non-controversial bills, the votes have forced an additional 300 hours of debate, or 25 additional 12 hour legislative days.


On Thursday I watched the floor discussion in the House of Representative on the continuing Chesapeake Bay Waterways authorization. This is a standing project originated by Senator Paul Sarbanes, and the present bill would make funding permanent to maintain historic and environmentally significant areas along the Bay. Last year it passed with only 80 votes opposing the measure, but in a deteriorating legislative environment this year, normal supporters registered their generally increasing hostility to the majority party by NO votes. Although the bill passed, as expected, it attracted novel objections and a smaller majority than any previous vote total.

The offense chose not to give voice to its underlying footdragging, but instead came up with the complaint that they had been forced to fly back to work for such insignificant legislation instead of moving into health care – which they have attacked for being ‘rushed’ through when it was brought up.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, led a GOP attack on Democrats Thursday contending they are wasting time and avoiding meaningful debate on big issues such as health care by considering only minor bills on the House floor.

That came as the House debated a bill to authorize permanent funding for a network of Chesapeake Bay trails and waterways.

Bishop, ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands, led a parade of Republicans who complained that was the only bill of significance that Democrats brought to the floor this week, while they said Democrats were thwarting a wide open debate of a variety of health care reform bills.

"This is like dej?vu [sic - editor's note] all over again, because last year, instead of talking about energy issues which were primarily on the minds of the American people, we brought up this particular bill," which passed the House but not the Senate, Bishop said…Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the parks subcommittee, shot back, however, saying Congress met this week largely to hear President Barack Obama address a joint session of Congress about health-care reform to further debate on it.

The attack that was launched against the Bay bill by Rep. ‘Doc’ Hastings, (R-Wash), another hilarity. He introduced an amendment to the proposal that would have refused funding for the Bay until such time as the nation’s deficit was under one trillion dollars. In Hastings’ version of the right wing’s newfound fiscal ‘conservatism,’ the opponent of Chesapeake Bay conservation declaimed that the House ‘never said a trillion before’.

Mysteriously, his own local funding measures did not share in Hastings’ attention. He had just put through funding for a road in his own district of Washington as Rep. Raul Grijalva pointed out, that did not occasion a block of that fearsome trillion attached to it. No doubt the right wing’s role in running up debts in the trillions – over the years they reveled in the seat of power – might have been noticed back in Hastings’ home state had sudden conversion to fiscal responsibility interfered with his district’s bacon.

The Party of No ran up the public debt it now rails against, and appears ready to continue the damage by any means it can find.

The oath these elected officials take to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, has lost any semblance of reality for the wingers, as they have turned into those public enemies.