Tfgray’s Weblog

I was thinking about Obama’s speech last night. I was pretty much on board with all the proposals, with the possible exception of those trade agreements, which I’ve heard bad things about. I watched Eric Cantor and John Boehner’s faces assume the “oh, we are so fucked” look. Eric seemed to have recovered his spirits by the time Fox News got a mike in front of his face, though, as he said he thought he could get some of the proposals through quickly, while he’d have to wait and see about the others. (Taking out my secret Republican decoder ring, I quickly ascertained that the tax cuts would pass quickly, while things like infrastructure projects and anything, basically, that would help the general public would be deferred to infinity.)

But there’s still that problem with the purest of the pure, those who believe that government should just curl up and die and would vote against it out of ideology, hatred of Obama, pure cussedness or because God told them to. [Or their husband. Same difference.] Yes, the Tea Party. I though long and hard and figured out a way around that. Actually, I got the idea from watching the Republican debate the night before.

Add two sentences to the bill:

• A State or Representative district will be required to “opt-in,” in order to collect Federal funds authorized by this act.
• A Representative or Senator’s vote in favor of this act will constitute a decision to opt in.

That should work. Republicans love the whole optional thing, you know, with opting in being even better than opting out. For example, states should be allowed to set their own pollution standards, unless, of course, they choose standards that the oil companies don’t like, like those hippies in California did. Rick Perry thinks states should be able to opt out of Social Security. Heck, he thinks states should be able to opt out of being states. (If Texas got its wish, I wonder who’d pay for their firefighters? Maybe he could ask the Koch Brothers to pony up.)

The more rightward-thinking Republicans also hate, just hate, hate, HATE, Federal largess. Well, unless there’s a photo-op involving themselves and a giant check involved.

So there you have it: they get to appeal to their base by voting against a landmark piece of Kenyan socialism, then putting their principles into action. What could be more ideologically pure than that?