What is Wrong With Republicans?

Here we are, less than a day before debt default -- or more exactly -- pay-as-you-go, and the House Republicans collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Is this a disaster, or what?

Who knows?  But J.T.Young writes that it's a lot easier for the presidential party to impose party discipline.  And right now President Obama desperately needs party discipline to show some backbone to his troops after the chaos of the Syria debacle and the Obamacare rollout.

Democrat divisions have been becoming more pronounced. Prior to the debt limit and shutdown, which strengthened Obama’s control over his Congressional allies, recent concerns have arisen over Obamacare and its implementation, continuing revelations over NSA surveillance, the recent Summers-Yellen debate over heading the Fed, and over his stance on Syria.

If Congressional Democrats should really break with Obama in appreciable numbers, his presidency would start to disintegrate as well and Democrat fissures become even more numerous and apparent.

Yeah.  That's the real problem.  Unless President Obama spends a lot of energy maintaining discipline in the ranks his people will start looking forward to the time without Obama.  When that happens, and it is a question of when and not if, the Obama ship will go on the rocks -- while everyone complains about Obamacare 24-7.  Why even a chap from Daily Kos is all wigged out about his steep increases in health insurance premiums.  And now that "Tirge Caps" is getting hammered he has this to say about the president's signature achievement: "This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people."

Listen.  All I'm worried about is that I'm in Boston and scheduled to take the train to Connecticut on D-Day, October 17.  What happens if the president pulls some new shutdown shenanigan Thursday?

But let us ease up from this misery and delight in the Hot People of the Responsible Self.  I am thinking of the hot mom that posed with her three young children on Facebook.  To the haters and nay-sayers that objected to her photo she had this to say.

I won’t go into details that I struggled with my genetics, had an eating disorder, work full time owning two businesses, have no nanny, am not naturally skinny and do not work as a personal trainer,” she wrote, in part. “What I WILL say is this. What you interpret is not MY fault. It’s yours. The first step in owning your life, your body and your destiny is to OWN the thoughts that come out of your own head.

Couldn't have said it better myself.  We humans are social animals, so everything we do is socially conditoned.  But back in the Axial Age the idea got about that each individual ought to be individually responsible for their one life to God.

If you are a conservative and Republican things are pretty discouraging right now.  But with people like Maria Kang in America you have to feel that we are destined to get out of the current Obama Slough of Despond pretty soon.

We'll do this not because of fate, but because of the individual determination of each Person of the Responsible Self.

And because President Obama is driving the Democratic Party off the cliff.

It may look like the president is beating up Republicans up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, but I suspect that he is subjecting his party to unnecessary and damaging battles that are a waste of political capital.

Only time will tell.