A bit earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives finally voted, de facto, to raise taxes on 160 million Americans as a Christmas/New Years gift to the country, apparently. Why did they do this? Simple: John Boehner lost control of his crazy caucus, specifically the ultra-rabid parts of it, who wouldn’t even agree to something that Mitch McConnell and the vast majority of Senate Republicans just voted for a few days ago (and that John Boehner supported as well, just a few days ago).
Still, isn’t this crazy, you ask, even for people who are…well, completely off the deep end? Yes, but my theory is that the House Teapublican’ts simply can’t abide three things: 1) cutting taxes for non-super-rich people; 2) paying for tax cuts for middle class and working class Americans by raising taxes on the top 1%; and/or 3) giving Democrats and, specifically, President Obama, any sort of political “victory,” even if in doing so they hurt America’s economy. In the end, this will be the Teapublican Tax Increase of 2012, make no mistake about it, and specifically the Eric Can’tor/House Teapublican’t Tax Increase of 2012.
Speaking of Eric Can’tor, he was one of 7 Virginia Republican’ts (also Forbes, Goodlatte, Griffith, Hurt, Rigell, and Wittman) who voted “aye” earlier today on a bill that was the height of cowardice — refusing to even vote up or down on the payroll tax cut, and instead punting it to a non-existent committee (non-existent, because the Senate left town after overwhelmingly passing the tax cut, expecting that John BONEr would uphold his end of the deal, which he clearly has now failed to do). The only Virginia Republican’t voting “nay” on this bill? Frank Wolf, who apparently must not be worried about a Tea Party challenge this time around, and instead is back to his game of pretending to be a “moderate,” which he hasn’t been for many, many years.
Needless to say, every Virginia Democrat voted “nay” on this steaming pile of horse manure. In fact, not one Democrat in the entire House voted for this, even the Blue Dogs, demonstrating how completely, wildly irresponsible this was. Did we just watch House Republicans commit political suicide for 2012? It’s certainly possible, and if so, it’s well deserved, for one of the most cowardly acts in Congress in many, many years.
UPDATE: I’m loving these new poll numbers (e.g., by a 19-point margin, Americans say they have more confidence in President Obama than in House Republican’ts), can’t wait to see what they do after Americans realize Republicans just hit them with a big tax increase, for absolutely no good reason, to start 2012.
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