Dems vow to protect Boehner from conservative coup

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21. Welcome to DU, Geronimoe!

Glad you're here! Point taken. However, I find myself leaning toward the "this is pretty smart strategy by the Dems" camp. In a political world like this one, sometimes one has to hold one's nose to vote for something - explicitly for the sake of keeping the worse of the two OUT of power. And I have yet to see the perfect candidate. Even on our side. Sometimes you have to maneuver and play games. That's something our side traditionally hasn't been that good at doing lately. But they seem to be learning. And it's making the GOP look like somebody the baboons out of the zoo and they're running amok all over town now. At this point, I'll take ANYTHING that manages to paint them into a corner or otherwise hobble their agenda - and especially - ANYTHING that makes them look glaringly idiotic and incompetent to the maximum number of potential voters.

We heard a boatload during the reagan era about the so-called "11th Commandment" - which is "thou shalt not speak ill of another republi-CON." Perhaps it's time the Dems adopted an 11th Commandment of their own: "Thou Shalt Do NOTHING that Helps the Opposition Look Good."

Besides, it toys wickedly with this supposedly sacrosanct "hastert rule" that the GOP seems to cling to - that you-the-GOP-leader can only advance bills in the House if you have a majority of GOP votes behind you. And the "hastert rule" isn't really a cast-in-bronze rule or law or any such thing. It's merely a vanity statement. But the extremists want that, and every time their guy has to violate it to get anything done, it further traumatizes and confounds the whole camp, and anything that throws them into disarray and hissy fits is a good thing for the rest of us. It helps our side prove to America that the other side is spectacularly unfit to govern. And frequent reminders of this do help.