Outgoing but still firmly in charge, Speaker John Boehner had plenty to say this morning:
“The Bible says, beware of false prophets. And there are people out there spreading, you know, noise about how much can get done,” Boehner said.
“We got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town, who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things they know — they know! — are never going to happen,” he added.
POLITICO has a great article on this that is worth reading in its entirety, comparing the current makeup of the GOP as a “dirty barn” that he intends to clean:
“Our founders didn’t want some parliamentary system where if you won the majority you got to do whatever you wanted,” he added. “They wanted this long, slow process. And so change comes slowly. And obviously too slowly for some.”
A better metaphor might be the Augean Stables.
…for those who miss the social reference, a clue.
At some point, folks wake up and figure out that there’s a clique of human beings out there profiting off of their impatience.
For the rest of us who are slowly waking up and figuring out that they are being played for fools? This is a 20-year fight, not something that will be overcome in one election cycle. Even if you were to swap out the POTUS and achieve a conservative legislature, I am absolutely shocked that it does not dawn on folks that not a single thing changes.
The judges, bureaucracy, policies, social rot, the noses at the trough, the $19 trillion of debt and the Baby Boomers that caused it, the entitlement system, our monetary system, the special interests and lobbying class, the public square which has stamped out religious sentiment, an education system producing victims rather than self-reliant human beings — all of that still remains.
We’re not getting to Libertopia overnight. When men like Boehner and Cantor, McConnell and so many others throw their hands in the air… that should give you pause.
When the folks who agree with 80% of what we believe start walking away? When the future isn’t a populist one, but a more libertarian-leaning one? Quo vadis, Tea Party?
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is perhaps my favorite film ever made. In the film, a prophet by the name of Maria pledges to the populace that a Mediator between the Head (those who built the Metropolis) and the Heart (those who make the vast city run) will bring a new era. Eventually, a false Maria steers the workers away from a patient path towards a more violent and revolutionary one. The workers rebel, and in the process destroy the “Heart Machine” which not only keeps Metropolis running, but keeps the Workers City below from flooding… the city where the worker’s children are…
What’s fascinating to this story is that Fredersen instructs the head foreman to allow the mob to overrun the Workers City and destroy the Heart Machine, knowing that the workers are sealing their own fates in doing so. The real Maria desperately tries to rescue the children in the Workers City; the false Maria makes her escape before the workers discover what they have really done.
Eventually we are going to stop accepting the lies. Perhaps not now, but soon. When the mob turns on the liars, what takes their place?
That is where the battle for the heart and soul of the conservative movement will be.
