Via Steve Benen:
Americans first learned back on June 24, more than four months ago, about the House Republican plan to file a lawsuit against President Obama. Two weeks later, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the basis for the case: the GOP would sue to implement an obscure provision of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans don’t actually want to see implemented.
There is a punch line; the actual complaint still has yet to be filed.
It is simple enough to explain what is going on here.
• Congressional Republicans decided their best strategy was to (A) stonewall President Obama on pretty much everything they could, and (B) combine this effort with an attempt to create a delegitimizing narrative in history—e.g., Birtherism, feet on the desk, what jacket the president is wearing, &c., in addition to the usual politics of working very hard to accomplish an outcome specifically so that one can then complain about that outcome.
• House Republicans might contend this is their only recourse, but that would be a lie. The simple fact is that the House can draft and adopt articles of impeachment at any time, but GOP leadership knows they have nothing.
• Hence, a lawsuit that will go exactly nowhere if it is ever filed; House GOP leadership already knows this.
• What is left, then, is a fundraising device. GOTO delegitimizing narrative. It’s not even a FOR/NEXT loop, but, rather, infinite spinning down the rabbit hole.
• When a Republican or one of those fake-independent conservative libertarians tells you government doesn’t work, remember that is not actually a policy assessment, but, rather, a policy goal—the GOP’s raison d’être.
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Benen, Steve. “The House GOP’s crumbling anti-Obama lawsuit”. msnbc. 27 October 2014.
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