Republican leaders are rubbing their hands together with anticipation for how they'll screw up the country in their first 100 days. Half of their agenda would be payoff to the Koch brothers, and the other half is simply intended to make sure everyone hates President Obama as much as possible by the end of his term.
The Hill has details:
Authorizing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, approving “fast-track” trade authority, wiping out proposed environmental regulations and repealing the medical device tax top their list.
“Those would all be positive things. You could come up with a list of very positive things and all of us are thinking about those,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is poised to become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee under a GOP takeover.
Other Republicans echoed Corker.“Those are four things that could happen that I believe would be great for the economy and enable us to move forward on a bipartisan basis,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said during a Thursday breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
GOP senators insist they are not “measuring the drapes” after six years in the minority.
Still, they’re preparing for what could be a brief, intense window of activity before 2016 presidential politics begin to dominate the landscape.
“We will have to be prepared if we are in a position to govern,” Corker said. “You got to think about those things you’d like to produce.”
To move their objectives, Senate Republicans must win in November and then work with a Democratic minority. Even in a best-case scenario, the party will be well short of a 60-plus majority able to block Democratic filibusters. But Republicans believe many of their priorities could be embraced by Democrats.
Sure they're not measuring the drapes. Sure.
But look at that list of priorities. Why don't they just step aside and let the Kochs run the country? Repeal environmental regulations? Approve Keystone XL? Awesome, baby.
You get what you pay for if you're a billionaire. If you're an ordinary person, you get what you vote for. Or what you don't vote for, if you don't vote. So yeah, once again I'm going to sing this chorus: Get out and vote.
In my daydreams about what might happen in November, Mitch McConnell loses to Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Democrats keep their majority. When I'm feeling really optimistic, I imagine the House flipping back to Democrats, even if it's by a super-slim majority. And when I want to take that up a notch, I imagine every tea party representative smacked down and sent home.
It can happen that way. It really can.
