On Being Irrelevant.....

It is personally painful to watch the Republicans in the House of Representatives trying so hard to make themselves players in the bailout saga. When you are in the legislative minority, without the procedural power to throw sand in the gears that their counterparts in the Senate enjoy, and your Party controls the Executive Branch, you are virtually irrelevant to the business of legislating. Years ago, I spent three terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in that situation. Yuck. There are only two roles open to House Republican Leader John Boehner and his hardy band of 199 Republicans: stay in the good graces of the White House by being a dutiful water boy – which is what he has done most of the time – or he can be a distracting pain in the ass, like a fly buzzing around your head that doesn’t bite, making it more difficult for the Democratic legislative majority and the White House to get the work done by threatening to withhold the fig leaf of bipartisanship. So Paulson and company have thrown the fig leaf to Boehner, adding a provision to the plan which gives the Government authority to do some of the insurance financing that permits the House Republicans to say that they added a "non-socialist" possibility. As the Times reported this morning, that gives Boehner enough to go to the Members who easy targets, those who are not running for re-election or have easy races and cobbling together enough votes so that McCain can say that his work bore fruit. Pretty sad. But if helps to get an agreement to do SOMETHING, that would be a plus. It will not quiet the right. Like William O. Perkins III, those capitalists will figure out the game, find a way to make their money off of whatever is finally enacted, and still complain that the country is gonig down the tubes.