The Politics of “Oh Yeh?”

Remember when you were a child?  Remember when somebody said something bad about you or someone you cared about?  Remember how you too often responded with something that started, “Oh yeh?  Well, you’re a…?”  Or maybe you repeated the ever popular, “I’m rubber and you’re glue.  Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”

This childish behavior now extends to the highest levels of our government.  And nobody is better at it than Teapublicans.  It’s as if they’re forever adolescents mentally frozen in the fifth grade.  Witness the Teapublican response to Democrats’ call for freezing interest rates on student loans.  The House passed a student loan bill that was amended to take money from the budget intended for health care. Then, in the Senate, Teapublicans filibustered a student loan bill that didn’t include the budget trick.

“Oh yeh, Democrats, take that!”  No honest debate.  No compromise.  Just another gotcha.

And how about the Teapublican reaction to the anniversary of the attack on Osama bin Laden?  As soon as President Obama posted a commercial commemorating the event on the Internet, Mitt Romney tried to diminish the gravity of the event by saying, “Of course I would have made the same decision.  Even Jimmy Carter would have.”  And the Teapublican megaphone, aka Fox News Channel, was turned up to full volume with all the hosts reading the following Teapublican talking point from their teleprompters:  “It’s as if President Obama is spiking the football in the endzone.”

Really?  That’s the game you want to play?  Ignoring the fact that President Bush played the 9/11 card for almost every event, couldn’t you think of a more adult response to President Obama?  Wouldn’t a grown-up admit that the president made a good decision, congratulate him and simply move on to another issue? 

Apparently, that’s not an option for Teapublicans. 

It seems that as soon as you register as a Teapublican, the Party bosses automatically rewind the way back clock…in your mind.