The Café is full of Casablanca Shock [1] victims today, for no very obvious reason, considering that the militant extremist Republican Party has been doin’ business at the same class and social premises for nearly a century and a half now. And the Whigs before them were not strikingly different.

"When I hear John Boehner intoning his daily sound bites, getting his cliches in a row, I" reflect what a difficult row it is that the Big Management Party political neocomrades have to hoe. Persons like that have to be the public face of Big Management, usually without being the least bit big-managerial themselves personally. At least ninety percent of each GOP hack pol’s time is spent on activities that members of America's party engage in also. Activities that America's party invented, often. Institutionally considered, Representative J. Boehner and Senator M. McConnell are almost as much the descendants of General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren of New York as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

The fatal difference, though, is that the Big Party's Boehners and McConnells do not want to be hack pols, or to resemble the present Speaker and Majority Leader even in the slightest.. Havin’ inhaled the toxic fumes of traditional GOP values, how can they live with themselves, knowing that they must be second- or third-raters? After all, if a GOP politician were a first rater, she would be John Galt. Or at very least, she would be John D. Rockefeller or Jeffrey Skilling. Maybe in a pinch Lloyd Blankfein.

Climbin’ to the top of the greasy pole only to find that there are twelve taller poles on the island of Manhattan south of 96th Street might be acceptable if the climber were attached to her pole for its own sake, but few, if any of their Boehners and their McConnells give any such impression as that. Rather notoriously, militant extremist Republican politicians do not give off "happy warrior" vibrations of the sort one could detect with Senator Humphrey or St. Bill Clinton. Tight-lipped and apoplectic lookin’ are the Boehners and McConnells, by and large.

George XLIII Bush was an exception, to be sure, but what an exception! The Big Party should thank their lucky shekels that Master Dubya got off the national stage before Televisionland and the electorate ever properly noticed that, technically speaking, the Dynasty Boy was a Big Manager, tarted up with an MBA from the Harvard Victory School itself. If Americans were ever distinctly to draw the conclusion that Big Management means makin’ the sort of public policy mudpies that Master Dubya made, fifteen decades of militant extremism in economics might terminate with extreme prejudice in about fifteen minutes. Barry XLIV may annoy the [expletive deleted] out of them, but he cannot possibly discredit them from within. (M. McConnell and J. Boehner can't discredit the core economic GOP from within either, for, as we have noticed, such creatures are not inside the true hard core themselves by virtue of their dubious choice of career.)

I notice that the Party of Big Management found itself in a characteristic pickle this afternoon in the House of Representatives and split right down the middle:

[J. Boehner and] 86 fellow Republicans joined 243 Democrats in voting 'yes.' It [the bonus snatchback] was opposed by six Democrats and 87 Republicans."

Talk about "the damndest near-run thing"! The more obviously loyal partisans of Big Managerial values did achieve an intramural majority, yet only by a single vote and with their own Oberhauptsturmführer sidin’ (this time) with the envious mob of slackers and Democrats against the noble Titans of Productivity. Authentic GOP first-raters should not be too hard on these weaker siblin’s without first reflectin’ how fortunate they are themselves never to have to show their war wounds in the Forum and solicit the votes of cobblers and used-car salespersons and the like. It will be fun to see how censorious the Wall Street Jingo decides to be tomorrow about the Gang of Eighty-Six. [2]

Anyway, nothing is less surprising than to find a J. Boehner wobblin’ back and forth between "clutches Republican totems" (with the 87 nays) and "pretend [to be] tribunes of right-wing populism defending Main Street" (with the 86 ayes). Considered as a leader, J. Boehner is arguably in exactly the right spot, square in the middle of Party-of-Grant Freeway, "along with the yellow stripe and the dead armadillos," as I am told they say in TX.

Happy days.

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[1] By CS I refer to naïve shock and indignation, real or feigned.

[2] WSJ slaves of Murdoch make remarkably few allowances for the special requirements of the political arm of Hooverville and Wingnut City. The op-ed page bozos are quite capable of thinkin’ that their Boehners and their McConnells should exhibit a kamikaze warrior spirit in defense of Absolutely Free Trade and the sacred unaccountability of Big Management to anybody but itself. There have been some curious exuberances of that sort in the matter of ‘crimmigrants’ and ‘criminaliens’, as certain of the Big Party base-and-vile have been known to refer to wetbacks.

Materially the Jingos’ views are usually to be preferred when they differ from those of the B&V, as not being the fruit of downdumbin’ and wombschoolin’. But formally, I dunno: had one the misfortune to be a militant extremist ("right-wing populist") oneself, the "Daddy Warbucks knows best" gentry could become a real pain in the anatomy. One might find oneself reduced to signin’ up with Neocomrade P. Buchanan's merry band of unlawful combatants.

Do you? Stop posting like a jerk. Address the alleged issue which is of such interest to you.