Liberal haters hate haters (except liberals)

Liberal haters hate haters (except liberals)

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78941809/

"House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, had a bad year. Democrats chided him for getting little done but holding 40 meaningless votes to repeal Obamacare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called Boehner, "A coward! He's a coward!" Tea partyers threatened to dump Boehner as speaker. The three moderate Republicans left just shook their heads. "I'm what you'd call a regular guy with a big job," Boehner said. Later he said disconsolately, "I need this job like I need a hole in the head.""

Normally, this author would have nothing good to say about a republican. Are we to believe his affinity for Boehner is because he is strong or weak? 

"Will the outcome of November's congressional election hinge on the popularity of (or anger about) Obamacare?"
Duh, of course.

"Who knows? But that hasn't stopped people from predicting this is going to be the big decider among midterm voters."
Is it safe to say that if ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster some will be looking for scalps?

"The Republicans have been planning to run against Obamacare since way before its launch turned into one of those tech debacles that take all the air out of the balloon of promise." This understates the disaster that is ObamaCare. To say this is normal is to deny reality.

"But will it work?" ObamaCare? No!

"The big subject will be the same as always in midterm elections when there is no presidential campaign to draw attention, passion and voters." But there is ObamaCare to add Passion to the debate. This could be a presents with pitchforks moment. Should this happen, how many core Democrats will abandon ship. Liberalism is the lazy man's party, they don't do hard.

How many people will actually vote?

That is just so dull compared to all the rhetoric about people despising Obamacare and Democrats (not to mention despising Obama) and hating everything about government and hence, ready to eviscerate anyone on the ticket.

But it just doesn't work that way. Hatred is not as big a problem as indifference.

Remember 2010, when a severely diminished bloc of voters (some 40 million less than in the Obama election two years earlier) showed up and sent a brace of very conservative Republicans to office, launched the myth of inevitability of the tea party and pushed the U.S. House to the far right?

What did we get for that?

First, a gridlocked mess on Capitol Hill that kept most anything of substance from being enacted, along with a series of suicide missions over national debt limits and the like that made the nation look foolish in the eyes of the world.

Shutting the government down a while back didn't help.

The year ended with House Speaker John Boehner slapping his own caucus for its foolishness and its inability to see national need through the far right fog it had pumped onto the political stage.

Lots of other more moderate Republicans took this as a sign it was OK to put your hands over your ears, close your eyes real tight and wear a T-shirt that said, "No tea party here!"

Then there was some progress on a couple of things intended to show progress so the incumbent Republicans would not go into an election looking like they just wanted to sledgehammer everything into oblivion.

How long can that last? About as long as it takes for the true tea partyers to gather their forces and create a lot more noise aimed at their goal of having no federal government at all.

It could be wishful to think the tea party has gone away as an important election day component. One must always remember that nothing changes all at one time, even in politics. It oozes from one thing to the next.

And there may still be enough oozing among tea party types to have an important impact in November's midterm election, when the U.S. House and a chunk of the U.S. Senate is in contest.

Here is how.

If you think of an election as a collection of people in a big room making a decision, one of the most important questions is: How many people are going to be in that room?

Think of tea party behavior as relatively static and still quite passionate despite a few recent debacles. Still, conventional wisdom holds that the fewer non-tea partyers in the room the stronger the tea party; the movement's strength will expand or decrease based on who shows up. Midterm contests being low turnout events, maybe only a dismal number of people will show up. That could make the tea party a very substantial voting bloc.

Which is what I think will happen.

People are always misreading the outcome of midterm elections, so any tea party success will be defined as a resurgence or a measure of how much people actually hate President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act.

So, how will people measure the midterm's outcome?

Liberals will break into a sweat and ask "How could this happen?" The people on the far right will hop around in tri-corner hats waving their "Don't Tread on Me!" flags, shouting they are back in charge and reviving another endless series of House votes aimed at defunding the programs they hate the most.

It will become no easier to be Speaker Boehner.

Inevitably, someone will write about the importance of voting every time, not just in presidential contests. But we have been there before.