Betting the Farm on a Pair of Twos

Back when I was in my late teens, I was about average for a teenage boy. Which is to say I was a dumbass. Strike that: I was a pig-headed, obstinate, willful, ignorant dumbass. (And that’s being somewhat charitable.) I had all the hallmarks of your typical teenage male: I was always sure I was right, I wouldn’t listen to others, I had to have things my way… you know the drill. Finally things got to the point where my parents were just about done with me, and a good family friend sat me down for a talk.

He approached me with advice that I remember to this day: “Don’t bet the farm on a pair of twos.”

He didn’t tell me I was wrong, he didn’t tell me to shut up and listen to my elders, any of the usual approaches that do no good with someone like that. He simply explained to me in excruciating detail how I was basically powerless to affect any real change, and if I kept pushing things I was going to end up alienating everyone who cared about me and anyone who might agree with me. He also answered my usual outraged protests about how I was in the right by pointing out this had nothing to do with right and wrong, this was about who was in charge. There are those who have power, and those who don’t. I could keep going the way I was and lose every friend I had, or I could back off and wait for a time when I had some influence or things might go my way.

It was good advice, and I bring it up because I see the House Republicans doing the same thing today. Whether or not I agree with their politics is irrelevant. The majority of the Senate does not, and President Obama most certainly does not. By continuing to press forward with bills that they know will never be accepted, not only daring but de facto demanding a government shutdown, the Republicans are betting the farm on a pair of twos. The farm in this case is the U.S. economy and the pair of twos is any possibility that the Democrats and Pres. Obama will take more flak from the American public over the shutdown than the Republicans will. After the spanking that the economy took after the last debt limit crisis, in what universe does it seem like a good idea to hold the economy hostage in an effort to “stand by your principles”? Do they really believe that the majority of Americans won’t notice, or even better, will thank them for it?

I understand that on all the news shows the Republican (and especially Tea Party) leadership is repeating ad nauseum that Americans don’t want the Affordable Care Act. For all I know they’re right, although as usual I am mighty suspicious when someone is so insistent about something that benefits them so completely and costs them nothing. That having been said, I would expect a party so concerned with fiscal responsibility to understand the concept of “costs and benefits”. The cost to waging this particular battle when there is, quite literally, no hope of winning is astronomically high; the benefits are extraordinarily low, unless they are still listening to the same pollsters who told them right up to the eleventh hour that Mitt Romney would win the White House.

The real problem is that in this particular poker game, the guys deciding to stay in to the last card aren’t putting up the blind, and they don’t have to pay up when the showdown is over. That falls on the rest of us, and that time is coming fast.