Boehner, GOP, Stumble on Dems Sacred Cow

The near shutdown of the federal government has perhaps shown the GOP-led House of Representatives the way to pass any future spending bill until they take back the other branches of the government.Follow me on this one for a second.

The Democrats initially refused any spending cuts in the budget, pushing us closer and closer to the shutdown. It wasn't until late Friday when they finally blinked and by then they had shown their colors. In getting the Democrats to agree to the 38.5 billion in cuts, the GOP had to give up their rider that would defund Planned Parenthood. That rider would have saved another 318 million dollars.

Now in giving it up, they forced the Democrats to at least vote on it in the Senate where it likely won't pass but can likely be used in some 2012 campaign ads. More importantly as we watched Harry Reid and his caucus draw their line in the sand, it showed a way to get if not everything we want at least a lot of it.

The House should submit every spending bill with that very same rider attached to it. In doing so the Democrats will have to compromise somewhere and the GOP can say, "we take away the rider, you give us these spending cuts."

When Paul Ryan submits the 2012 budget he should ensure that it has the Title X rider, as well as riders to defund NPR, the NEA and all these other ridiculous wastes of tax dollars. Then to inch the Democrats closer to the numbers we need to get to we slowly peel away riders. Now eventually these things will have to get through but they can wait for a year and a half until we get all three branches of the government back. As of right now we only control as Speaker Boehner said "One half of one third of the federal government."

Now perhaps, the GOP should have shut the government down and pushed a little harder to get the things they really wanted; perhaps now it's too late to have real ammo for the coming battles of the debt ceiling and the FY 2012 budget. Who knows? Let's see how things shake out from here, I think Boehner, Cantor and Ryan can still make some hay with these coming battles.

They better, we gave them the House to do just that and so far they have if not let us down entirely, certainly left us with a bad taste in our mouths. I was rooting for the shutdown and was sad to see it not come to pass I think the GOP lost a good chance to win the PR war and really show whose side they were on.

Call this one strike one Mr. Speaker. Let's hope you learned something from the story of the Mighty Casey.