Writing at the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart explains why a detente may be fleeting in the latest searing bipartisan battle on Capitol Hill. He says President Barack Obama is done rewarding the GOP's bad behavior.
As the sad drama of Miriam Carey was unfolding on Pennsylvania Avenue, I was listening to a Republican member of Congress talk about the sad reality that has engulfed his majority on Capitol Hill. The government shutdown is a big mess for Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans. What moved the discussion from sad to scary is the lack of awareness that President Obama is done rewarding their bad behavior.
I would liken this to a little bit like Gettysburg where, you know, a confederate unit went looking for shoes and stumbled into a Union cavalry and all of a sudden they found themselves embroiled in a battle on a battlefield they didn't intend to be on and everybody just kept feeding troops into it. And that's basically what's happening now, the Republican member said. In a political sense, this isn't exactly the fight, I think, the Republicans wanted to have, certainly the leadership wanted to have, but it's a fight that's here.
Tangling with the president over his signature legislative and political achievement that was upheld by the Supreme Court and, by virtue of the 2012 presidential election, the American people was doomed to fail.
Read Jonathan Capehart's entire piece at the Washington Post.
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