GOP blackmail over the debt won’t work this time

MIAMI – One definition of insanity is trying something over and over and over with the same negative result and continuing to do it expecting a positive result.

By that definition, Republican zealots in the House of Representatives should have been committed long ago. Talk about obsession: Forty-one times the House of Representatives voted to kill the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) by defunding it. And forty-one times the U.S. Senate said “no.” A man who unsuccessfully propositioned a woman more than three dozen times would be a laughingstock at best, or at worst sitting in a mental institution as an obsessive-compulsive or in jail charged with stalking.

But the members of the GOP-controlled House are still free to wreak havoc on Capitol Hill, and they are doing it. Indeed, they saved for last their most lunatic attempt yet to destroy Obamacare. As I write this, the Republicans in the House are threatening to defund virtually the entire government of the United States unless the Senate and the president grant them, on a silver platter, the object of their obsessive desire: the head of Obamacare.

They are doing it by refusing to raise the “debt ceiling,” which must happen for the nation to meet its financial obligations, foreign and domestic, obligations backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States.” Before the fanatics took over the Republican Party and invaded Congress like a troop of zombies, raising the debt ceiling was a routine procedure. Also, what politician in his right mind wants to be held responsible for shutting down the government, scaring to death retirees and other key constituencies, risking wrecking the U.S. and global economy, and gravelly undercutting the world’s confidence in the credit-worthiness of this country?

But that was before the young radical geniuses in the GOP discovered that they could use the debt ceiling as an instrument of blackmail, their very own doomsday machine.

Is there logic to this madness? Not really, although Republican hardliners may be deluding themselves into believing there is. After all, last time they pulled this vile trick, they succeeded in coercing the president into making some significant concessions that were anathema to the base of the Democratic Party and provided new stepping stones in the GOP’s long war against workers and the middle class. If Obama caved before to the threat of economic disaster then why would he stand firm now? After all, psychologists say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

If this is what Republicans are thinking, they are in for a rude surprise. This time Obama will not surrender to extortion. They may not know it, but the Republicans are dealing with a different Obama. Obama is a moderate and even-tempered man to a fault, but it’s clear that Republican antics over the last six years have finally, and deeply, gotten under his skin. They are dealing with an angry man. Although he tries not to show it, his words sometimes betray it. “They are messing with me,” Obama said not long ago, referring to the Republican’s latest “give me what I want or I will blow up the world” gambit. That’s street code for over my dead body – or yours.

Then there is the fact that what the Republicans are trying to destroy is the one major achievement of Obama’s presidency. Obamacare will be his legacy. What the Republicans are really gunning for politically by going for Obamacare so fervently is Obama’s head, which they have been after since his first day in the White House. How do you spell no way, no how, never? Obama will spell it VETO. That’s if the House bill is approved by the Senate, which is unlikely.

Not only will House Republicans lose this fight with the president, their latest cynical move also will cost them politically. It’s not just the precedent of 1994. Recall when Newt Gingrich went toe-to-toe with Bill Clinton and the Republican Speaker created a government shutdown. Who got most of the blame? Gingrich and the GOP. This time may be worse.

None other than Karl Rove, the evil genius behind George W. Bush’s political rise, is warning the party not to carry through with their threat. Rove’s organization, Crossroads GPS, conducted a survey in selected states and Congressional districts that lean Republican or are tossups. Not surprisingly given the GOP-leaning sample, 60 percent opposed Obamacare. Yet these same voters opposed defunding Obamacare by almost 2-1 (58 to 38 percent) if it means even a temporary shutdown of the federal government. Shutting down the government is still bad politics, and even those who may dislike a sitting president don’t care for hostage-taking as a political tactic.

It says a lot about the loonies running the GOP that Karl Rove, the man who on election night 2012 couldn’t accept that Obama was blowing away Romney, went ballistic on national television when the election was called for Obama, and even started an argument with the number-crunchers at Fox News about their projections, is now virtually the most reality-based person in the party.