Today's Republicans vs. the United States (Part 1):
On last night's under-the-radar podcast/online radio venture, Cheater and the Rude, the Rude Pundit posited another way to think about the Republicans and their relationship with America. It's a variation on the abused partner metaphor, one that's a bit more extreme: At this point, Republicans have gotten so batshit and destructively irrational about their hatred of Obama and the Democrats that they've become like the psychotic boyfriend who grabs his girlfriend who's threatening to break up with him and puts a razor to her face, saying, "I'm gonna make you so ugly, no one will ever fuck you again. And then you'll only have me" before horribly scarring her.

What more can we make of a party that seems determined to wreck whatever it can in order to the nation to shit, calculating that frightened Americans will turn back to Republicans.

The nonsense over the date of the President's address to Congress made the Rude Pundit wonder, "Are there no depths to which they'll go in order to degrade Obama? At this point, are they just fucking with him for fun? Are they just seeing how often they can get him to cave?" Yeah, there's a Republican candidates' debate scheduled. On NBC. One network, a debate that no one's gonna fuckin' watch other than geeks trying to out-tweet each other. Boehner made a power play. And Obama, always trying to stay above any fray, even those where he should be in the alley, swinging hard, moved the speech and even made it early in the evening so as not to piss off NFL fans. The stupidity and childishness of Boehner's actions shouldn't overshadow whatever substance of the speech might be, a speech that is already making the particularly rank assholes in the House majority teabag themselves.

Today, Paul Krugman, referring to Eric Cantor's call for budget offsets to any additional disaster funding, wrote, "Never mind getting enough votes to pass legislation; it gets what it wants by threatening to hurt America if its demands aren’t met. That’s what happened with the debt-ceiling fight, and now it’s what’s happening over disaster aid."

To take it further, this year has become about whether or not you give a shit about America. The battle that is occurring in our politics is so ludicrous that it begs belief. We are, in essence, arguing over whether or not there should be a United States of America. This ain't liberal hysteria. This comes from listening, reading, and watching the right, including nearly every candidate for president.

Next week, the Rude Pundit will get more into how the current Republicans are wrecking the country in a way that the Bush administration could only dream about.

For now, let's just say this: Boehner denied the President on the date of the speech because he knew he could. He knew he could turn his back on a century of precedent, and he knew he could get away with it. And that's sad on so many levels.