OK, so the line from the talking heads is that the leaders of the Republicans in the shutdown have seats that have been gerrymandered to be 100% safe, they are not going to feel the heat for anything they do or say.
But the other thing I hear is no social security checks or veterans pay due to the shutdown. People LIVE on those checks. Are there really more than a dozen Congressional districts without veterans or non-rich old people in them? Because I know there will be SCREAMING heard by staffers of the Congressmen who have such folks in their districts, which I would imagine would be … ALL of them. And not just from the veterans and old people but from their relatives, too, who are suddenly being hit up for money by grandpa and grandma and Brother Jimmy who’s in the Army.
Frankly, I can’t see ANY representative surviving the kind of ire that the shutdown will produce. I mean, people can be really fricking blind with regard to ideology, happy to harm their children economically in order to prevent gays from marrying … but when the checks they need RIGHT NOW to LIVE on are gone, that tends to make the focus on the here and now really hard.
So I don’t see ANY Congressman, including the goddamn teabaggers, as being safe from harsh electoral consequences if the shutdown continues for more than a handful of days. Am I wrong?
We’ll see. But I think those safe seats are a major reason this is happening in the first place and some Republicans have been hard at work saying a shutdown (or even a default) is no big deal. If enough of their constituents accept those theories, there won’t be that much pressure.
Yes, you are wrong on a few counts. Social Security checks will continue to go out on time. Veterans benefits (including health care) will be okay. Link. The Westboro Baptist Church Amendment on gay marriage to the funding resolution wasn’t included, mostly because you just made that up.
And yes, the vast majority of congressmen will be re-elected in 2014. No cite for that yet, we have to wait about 13 months.
The big impacts won’t happen for a few weeks. When we hit the debt ceiling, though…then things are going to get ugly. That’s when almost all the checks stop going out.
I don’t understand how a seat can be entirely safe. They may not have to fear losing to a democrat, but couldn’t a less extreme Republican beat them in a primary?
No. There is no such thing as being too far right in the blood-red districts.
Until the SS checks stop going out, the safe Republicans have no incentive to lift a finger. What we need to do is make the SS checks stop instantly when the government shuts down- there would never be another shutdown. Then all we gotta do is make an Amendment reading: “The President shall have the authority to borrow any funds needed to pay for spending authorized by Congress when taxes authorized by Congress are insufficient.” No more debt ceiling hostage taking.
Only in theory, unless he really pisses off the constituents and not just his colleagues. A primary normally has a low turnout, consisting of mostly the highly motivated (i.e. either strongly ideological or really pissed) voters. That’s how most of these jokers got nominated themselves.
More to the point, the seats are safely Republican, not safely “Joe Schmoe (R-??)”. The GOP isn’t too worried about losing them but Rep. Schmoe is worried that if he doesn’t make a show of burning down the government, someone will primary him from his right and call him a weak RINO.
Some Republican is going to win that red district seat and it won’t be “Who was the most moderate? Let’s pick him!”
And that really is the crux of the problem: the tea-party republicans are doing the rational thing for self-preservation, representing the will of their constituents. But overall this is devastating for the country as a whole. I think there is a term for this… tragedy of the commons maybe?
Or someone willing to act more extreme, but with the intelligence and soullessness enough to understand the game and to try to appear reasonable for November. There really does have to be a large contingent within the faction who’s trapped by it and would be happy to escape if they saw an opportunity.