Through most of American history, the filibuster was a once-in-a-blue-moon rarity. Now, in a shift so profound as to constitute a de facto amendment to the Constitution, it has become a routine obstructionist tool. And our leading journals have so internalized this process that in a story like today’s they:
  – report a 51-49 vote as a failure;
  – suggest a vague, caused-by-no-one “where bills go to die” systemic dysfunction; and
  – do not even use the word “filibuster.”

This is an excellent example of how sloppy and uncritical journalism gives deviant acts the ability to become unquestioned norms. See: the financial crisis of 2008 or the lead-up to the Iraq War.

Update: Fallows follows up on his post.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is so embarrassed about the 9 percent approval rating — released Tuesday night in a New York Times/CBS poll — that he’s going incognito.

“It’s so bad sometimes I tell people I’m a lawyer,” the South Carolina Republican told POLITICO on Wednesday. “I don’t want to be associated with a body that in the eyes of your fellow citizens seems to be dysfunctional. It matters to me.”

“We’re below sharks and contract killers,” added freshman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).

Indeed, lawmakers themselves aren’t among the 9 percent who approve of their own work.

Humor me. I realize that nobody actually expects the Democrats to hold on to a majority in the House. But consider this just a thought experiment.

Republican obstructionism has been bad enough since Obama took office. If all the Republicans who have been fondly looking forward to becoming Speaker of the House or taking that huge leap from ranking member to committee chairman wake up on November 3 to find that their wet dreams have suddenly dried up (or even worse, if they already know this before they go to bed on November 2), can you even begin to imagine the resulting howl of rage? Can there be any doubt that we would then witness the biggest political temper tantrum this country has ever seen? Can there be any doubt that House Republicans — and Senate Republicans too, in sympathetic frustration — will hold their breath till not just they turn royal blue in the face, but we too?

If Republicans do take the House, we can look forward to endless witch-hunt investigations, and a total shutdown of any meaningful process of government. If Republicans fail to take the House, yes, we will be spared the endless witch-hunt investigations. But that’s just an annoying waste-of-taxpayer-dollars sideshow. Can there be any doubt that we will still be treated to a total shutdown of any meaningful process of government? Treated to obstructionism on a scale we have never seen before, that we cannot even conceive of at this point.

If Republicans win the House, the sky will fall on our heads. If they lose the House, the sky will still fall on our heads, I think.

The latest in-your-face behavior involves a public exhibition of lobbyists tucking money into the Republican Party’s garter belt, in ways that are clearly obscene, but may fall just short of meeting the public standards definition of obscenity:

Campaign finance experts said the two main Republican campaign committees are breaking new ground — and treading close to the legal line — in soliciting corporate contributions to help throw an election night party.

The lobbying and law firm Akin Gump, together with the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are circulating the solicitation, asking between $2,500 and $10,000 for levels of sponsorship of the event at the posh rooftop bar at the W Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The event seeks “underwriters” rather than contributors, and the solicitation reads at the bottom: “This is not a fundraising event. This reception is being held in compliance with applicable federal ethics rules.”

That’s all it takes. You can go out and raise money to finance a clearly political event. All you have to do is make sure that you
a) formally label your donors something else
b) self-certify that what you’re doing is not fundraising, that everything is perfectly legal and ethical.

Not everyone is impressed, of course:

Meredith McGehee, the Policy Director at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan group that favors finance regulation and is chaired by John McCain‘s campaign lawyer, said she’s never seen an invitation to an event that listed both party committees and corporations as hosts.
[...]
“Because of the soft money limits and because there are party committees involved, parties should have an abundance of caution in ensuring they comply with the law, and they seem to have found a clever lawyer who figured out this is permissible because it’s not a fundraiser,” said McGehee. “It’s a little too cute by half.”

Another prominent campaign finance lawyer unconnected to the event asked not to be quoted by name, but emailed: “The NRSC and NRCC are raising money to pay for this event. That sounds like contributions to me and soft money is illegal.”

But there aren’t going to be any consequences to the Republican Party from these people being unimpressed. McGehee herself concedes the point:

But McGehee said the Federal Elections Commission would be unlikely to attempt to enforce anything in this gray area, and this may simply be a pioneering new loophole in the Swiss cheese-like regulatory regime.

So why should the Republican Party care? It may look like a duck, and it may waddle and it may quack. As long as there are not going to be any proceedings to see if it meets the legal definition of a duck, it ain’t no duck at all.

(2)
Here’s how flagrant the GOP’s political prostitution has become. They have no problem putting stuff like this in writing:

With the majority in the balance, donors can pay between $10,000 and $2,500 for benefits beginning with “prominent signage” and special “VIP” access.

Also available are “other benefits as determined by underwriter’s needs.”

Put up the money, guys. And be sure to let us know what you need, okay?

(3)
The NSRC, meanwhile, is trying to hide behind the skirts of this fiction: that it’s really not their event at all, they are just one of a large number of co-hosts.

And NRSC Communications Director Brian Walsh defended the committee’s role.

“The NRSC is not soliciting funds or in any way raising money for this event. We’ve simply paid our allocable share to co-host an election night event and celebrate what we hope to be a great night for Republicans,” he said.

And the NRSC isn’t even one of the big-bucks co-hosts. They’re just a $5,000-level co-host.

All $5,000-level co-hosts are not equal, though. Some are co-hosts with benefits. The “underwriting” solicitation somehow gives marquee billing to a lousy $5,000 co-host.

Mike Crapo, Republican senator from Idaho, has now left no doubt whatsoever how crushingly stupid he is. He wrote to the Congressional Budget Office with a question that must have perplexed him no end. Passing certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act was estimated to reduce the deficit by $455 billion over 10 years; what effect would repealing these provisions have on the deficit?

The CBO, with a straight face, spelled it out for him:

Finally, you asked what the net deficit impact would be if certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act that were estimated to generate net savings were eliminated—specifically, those which were originally estimated to generate a net reduction in mandatory outlays of $455 billion over the 2010–2019 period. The estimate of $455 billion mentioned in your letter represents the net effects of many provisions. Some of those provisions generated savings for Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and some generated costs. If those provisions were repealed, CBO estimates that there would be an increase in deficits similar to its original estimate of $455 billion in net savings over that period.

The CBO response makes it clear that Crapo knew the CBO had estimated the savings from passing the provisions to be $455 billion. And he was still having trouble figuring out the impact of repealing the provisions.

The Republican Party, of course, specializes in putting the craziest inmates in charge of the asylum. Crapo is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Healthcare.

(2)
In related news, Igor Volsky over at ThinkProgress’ Wonk Room displays an equally strong case of Crapo’s Syndrome, aggravated by an attack of reading incomprehension.

The CBO’s letter to Crapo said: “On balance, the two laws’ health care and revenue provisions are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $28 billion, and the education provisions of the Reconciliation Act are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $2 billion.”

Volsky somehow read that as saying that the deficit would be reduced by $30 billion over the next 10 years, instead of just in 2020.

And so he cheerfully banged out the following paragraph:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new letter saying that while the health care law could “reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion over the next 10 years,” repealing it would increase the deficit by an estimated $455 billion…

It obviously never occurred to him that the reduction in the deficit from passing a given piece of legislation simply has to equal the increase in the deficit from repealing it.

 
*** Update, 12:55 p.m. ***

Interestingly, there is now an update to Volsky’s post. And no, it isn’t what you think. He still hasn’t realized his mistake. He’s just clearing up possible confusion on a different front:

To clarify, the $445 billion figure refers to the deficit increase if only the Medicare portions were repealed. Repealing the entire law would increase the deficit by some $140 billion.

I look forward with keen interest to seeing if Volsky corrects the foot-in-mouth. (And, if so, what kind of acknowledgment is made in the post of the correction.)

 
*** Update #2, 1:03 p.m. ***

Not one of Volsky’s finest days. The correction in his Update is, in fact, incorrect.

The $445 billion figure does not refer to “the deficit increase if only the Medicare portions were repealed.”

As the first quote in the post makes clear, the $445 billion figure refers to “certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act” that affect Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program”.

Maybe he’ll correct his correction?

 
*** Update #3, 1:09 p.m. ***

Volsky’s Update has now been revised to:

To clarify, the $445 billion figure refers to the deficit increase if only the Medicare portions were repealed. Repealing the entire law would increase the deficit by some $140 billion. Republicans however, are strong opponents of the Medicare cuts and sponsored a series of amendments that would have repealed them.

He still hasn’t caught either of his errors.

(And we already know, don’t we, that they don’t seem to have editors over at ThinkProgress.)

 
*** Update #4, 2:21 p.m. ***

It only just struck me that Volsky’s post starts with:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new letter saying that while the health care law could “reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion over the next 10 years,” repealing it would increase the deficit by an estimated $455 billion…

He puts the incorrect statement — reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion over the next 10 years — in quotes. But that statement is nowhere in the letter.

Now that’s not exactly in the best practices handbook, is it?

 
*** Last and Final Update (I hope), 2:36 p.m. ***

It strikes me that Volsky’s Update (See my Update #3) is probably in need of some annotation. Here’s my sense of that it means. Volsky is saying that $30 billion and $445 billion are apples and oranges. He’s saying $30 billion is the savings from “the entire law” over 10 years, but $445 billion is the cost of repealing just the Medicare provision. So, according to him, the apples to apples comparison is that passing “the entire law” was projected to save $30 billion over 10 years, but repealing the “the entire law” is projected to cost $140 billion over 10 years.

 
*** Update #6, 3:22 p.m. ***

I finally decided to send the following email to Faiz Shakir, Vice President at the Center for American Progress and Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report:

Shouldn’t someone at ThinkProgress be deeply embarrassed by this: http://www.1115.org/2010/08/26/who-says-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-stupid-question/

Stay tuned.

 
*** Update #7, 4:22 p.m. ***

The following update has now been appended to the post:

The first sentence of this post, which relied on a Modern Health article, incorrectly said that the law would reduce the deficit by $30 billion over 10 years. It will reduce it by this amount in 2020. The CBO estimates that the law will produce “$143 billion in net budgetary savings over the 2010-2019 period.”

So Volsky relied on an article that he did not mention, cite or link to. That’s not in the best practices handbook either. (That incorrect statement in quotes that I referred to earlier is presumably from this article. They require a free subscription to access content, and I didn’t bother to sign up.)

Relying on an article that he did not mention, cite or link to, he made statements that are clearly seen to be untrue if you read the CBO letter. A letter Volsky did link to, but apparently didn’t read. (Insert “best practices handbook” comment of your own choice here.)

The first sentence of the post now reads:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new letter saying that while the health care law could reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion in 2020, repealing it would increase the deficit by an estimated $455 billion…

Which really doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. It doesn’t clarify that the $455 billion is a 10-year figure (although that is eventually clear from the following quote). More importantly, the reader has no clue why a one-year saving from passing the law is being compared to the 10-year cost of repealing it.

The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the “key plot facilitators” in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
[...]
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only existing recordings made within the clandestine prison system and could offer a revealing glimpse into a four-year global odyssey that ranged from Pakistan to Romania to Guantanamo Bay.

The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions in 2002 at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the videos remain a closely guarded secret.

How closely guarded? The tapes were discovered in 2007, and we’re only just hearing about them:

When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staff member discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.

How inconvenient is it that the Binalshibh tapes exist?

Apparently the tapes do not show harsh treatment — unlike videos the agency destroyed of the questioning of other suspected terrorists.

Imagine that! The only tapes known to have survived do not show harsh treatment.

Note that we’re implicitly being asked to believe that, for some reason known only to the CIA — and, maybe, to God, though that’s doubtful — the CIA made interrogation tapes only of these three detainees. There were the tapes of Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri that were oh so regrettably destroyed. And there are the tapes of Binalshibh that we have just learned about. And the CIA never made tapes of any other detainees.

Because, like, what was the point? After taping three detainees, they had a top-secret eyes-only meeting, and they decided: “Been there. Done that. Enough.” Of course, they took a vote. The outcome? “The eyes have it.” And that was that. Henceforth, all interrogations were eyes-only.

The AP story has one statement that baffled me:

With military trial commissions on hold while the Obama administration figures out what to do with a number of terror suspects, Binalshibh has never had a hearing on whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.

I could have sworn that a military commission trial started just the other day. Last week, wasn’t it? Here’s Dahlia Lithwick from last Friday (a really eloquent piece; well worth your while reading the whole thing):

But instead of subjecting the so-called “worst of the worst” to a military tribunal, this past week the Obama administration fired up the tribunal system to try Omar Khadr, a child soldier. Khadr’s defense counsel, Jon Jackson, collapsed Thursday while questioning a witness and was airlifted back to the United States for treatment. There will be at least a 30-day delay in the proceedings. Maybe we can use this small break to look again at what Guantanamo has become and to acknowledge that Omar Khadr represents everything we shouldn’t be trying before a secretive military commission.

But just because the AP was totally wrong about military commission trials being on hold doesn’t mean the rest of their story isn’t 100% accurate.

The part about the CIA’s lies — first brazen, then tortured — certainly rings true:

The CIA first publicly hinted at the existence of the tapes in 2007 in a letter to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia. The government twice denied having such tapes, recanting once they were discovered. …

At the time, the CIA played down the significance of the videos, saying they were not taken as part of the agency’s detention program and did not show CIA interrogations.

But that case can be made only because of the unusual nature of the Moroccan prison, which was largely financed by the CIA but run by Moroccans, the former officials said. The CIA could move detainees in and out, and oversee the interrogations, but officially Morocco had control.

Let’s hope that the Ramzi Binalshibh tapes don’t become too controversial. Because what the CIA found yesterday can just as easily go missing again tomorrow. The CIA already knows there aren’t any real consequences for such shenanigans. Not beyond having to listen to Congressional fulminations, and having to keep a straight face while pretending to be extremely redfaced.

(In a move that Sarah Palin is no doubt kicking herself for not having come up with in her own time of need, Ensign “has registered his legal defense fund as a 527 political organization”, which makes contributions tax-exempt. So now, all of us are partners in Ensign’s legal defense. Of his apparently illegal actions. In fact, Ensign’s legal defense fund is contributing — in its own humble way — to increasing the deficit. Which Ensign, like all other Republicans in Congress, cares passionately about. Or maybe I shouldn’t use the word passionately in the context of a story about the consequences of his uncontrollable libido?)

Here’s part of what Ensign wrote in his fund-raising appeal (admittedly, the best part):

As I am sure you are aware, I admitted last year to making the worst mistake of my life.

In addition to causing great pain to my family, friends, and supporters, that mistake has also resulted in a difficult legal battle.

I have taken responsibility for my actions and worked hard to become a better husband, father, friend, and senator, but I have been accused of doing things I absolutely did not do.

No, John, the adultery you admitted to last year wasn’t the worst mistake of your life. After all, that’s not what the FBI is investigating you for, is it?

For example, all of the following are much bigger mistakes: having your parents pay hush money to your ex-mistress and her husband; displaying a reckless disregard for the law by actively pimping for the cuckolded husband’s illegal lobbying activities; deciding to brazen it out instead of quietly resigning when it was clear that you had been caught fair-and-square breaking the law.

But here’s Jon’s response to the above passage from John’s fund-raising letter:

John Ensign is a man of many talents, not the least of which are his skill at twisting the truth and of putting on a false front to the world. (What is it about people with exactly this combination of personality defects that convinces them early in life that they are cut out to be politicians?)

Nevada’s junior senator has been morally superior in public while morally inferior in private, and he created a web of deceit that ensnared friends and supporters now being punished for his indiscretions. Facing an ethics probe and a federal investigation, Ensign has tried to make his scandal about a moment of human weakness (that lasted for months) and nothing more.

But it has always been about much more…
[...]
Where to begin?

That mistake — this is just about sex! — did not lead to a “difficult legal battle.” Ensign is in legal jeopardy not because he slept with his wife’s best friend and his best friend’s wife — that never sounds less grotesque, does it? — but because of how he tried to cover it up, pay off the couple through Mom and Dad and then try to hush up the cuckolded husband by importuning people he regulates to hire him.

The vast majority of people, I think, would forgive Ensign for weakness of the flesh — the social conservative base he pandered to, notwithstanding. But his manipulation of the lives of Cindy and Doug Hampton and his shameful attempt to play the victim now have outraged many who might have been forgiving.

As for “being accused of things I absolutely did not do,” I ask: Really? Do tell. All we’ve heard is “no comment” for more than a year. What is there in the past that should induce us to believe him?

As CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan points out, it seems indisputable that Ensign did all of the following:

Senator Ensign had an extended affair with a campaign staffer, who happened to be married to his chief of staff Doug Hampton, fired them both, and had his parents pay them off without properly reporting it to the Federal Election Commission. He then conspired to help Mr. Hampton to set up a lobbying business to lobby his own office, in violation of federal law.

All of that would have to filed under “Accused of doing and actually did”.

The one thing that Ensign absolutely did not do in the course of his extended and ongoing sexual-shenanigans-and-cover-up scandal is tell the truth about actively aiding and abetting Doug Hampton’s career as an illegal lobbyist.

And last I checked, no one has actually accused Ensign of telling the truth about that.

Especially when mine makes a lot more sense than theirs:

Any member of the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives who is found to have consistently lied to the American people for political purposes — where consistently is defined as 6 lies in any period of 12 consecutive months — shall have their citizenship revoked, immediately and forever. Such members shall immediately be deported to any uninhabited island of their choice, or — at their option — to Libya, Syria, Somalia, North Korea or Iran.

As 2012 approaches, he has raised as much money as all of his potential rivals combined and sits atop the polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

If Gingrich, who appears to have been not distinguishably different from a repulsive creep for most of his adult life, was serious about his presidential ambitions, he should have first made his peace with his second wife, Marianne.

That’s the one whom he had already proposed to before he was divorced from his first wife. The one to whom he confessed, in 1999, soon after Marianne had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, that he was having an affair with a woman who was in Marianne’s apartment “eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed.” Confessed to the affair, said it was going to continue, and asked Marianne to “tolerate” it.

(His first wife, Jackie was the one whom he asked for a divorce while she was in the hospital recuperating from cancer surgery. Jackie, by the way, was his former high school geometry teacher, and he married her when he was 19 and she was 26, but let’s not go there.)

In case, you were wondering, yes, this is the very same Newt Gingrich who liked to go around piously making statements like:

The Democratic Party has been the active instrument of breaking down traditional marriage.

But back to Marianne. Yes, Newt really should have made his peace with her before he got too heavily invested in his 2012 presidential bid. “Back in the 1990s, she told a reporter she could end her husband’s career with a single interview.” And she now seems to have given that interview. To Esquire, who published it this morning.

It’s a long, long article. Some quick excerpts from page 1:

She was married to Newt Gingrich for eighteen years, all through his spectacular rise and fall … This is the first time she’s talked about what happened, and she has a case of the nerves but also an air of liberation about her. … You might be inclined to think of what she says as the lament of an abandoned wife, but that would be a mistake. There is shockingly little bitterness in her, and she often speaks with great kindness of her former husband.
[...]
She says she should have seen the red flags. “He asked me to marry him way too early. And he wasn’t divorced yet. I should have known there was a problem.”

Within weeks or months?

“Within weeks.”
[...]
And he did the same thing to her eighteen years later, with Callista Bisek, the young congressional aide who became his third wife. “I know. I asked him. He’d already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked.”

He told you that?

“Yeah, he wanted to — “

And here’s what most people are going to regard as the juicy part, the part that Newt will be dodging questions about for a good long while (all the way at the end, on page 8):

But Marianne was having problems of her own. After going to the doctor for a mysterious tingling in her hand, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother’s birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn’t return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.

“About what?”

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ ”

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. ” ‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’ ”

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Like I said once before: Chewt, ya, Newt!

Yesterday, he offered this timeless piece of helpful clarification:

The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate doubled down on a controversial statement he made this weekend, arguing in greater detail that tax cuts for wealthy people should never be offset by tax increases in other areas — but that unemployment benefits need to be fully paid for by either spending cuts or tax increases. In so doing, he claimed candidly that the very existence of unemployment insurance is a “necessary evil,” while tax cuts ought not be paid for by increases in order to make it easier to shrink the size of government.

“My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut,” Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl told a handful of reporters outside the Senate chamber this afternoon. “That clearly reduced savings is a better way to offset increased spending than a tax increase is.”

The rationale, Kyl said, goes back to the fundamental conservative goal of shrinking the size of government. If tax cuts are offset by tax increases in other areas, then it’s hard to drown government in a bathtub.

First of all, o confused eminent personage of the Republican persuasion, the question wasn’t how to offset increased spending, the question was how to offset reduced tax collections.

Secondly, increased spending gets offset by reduced savings? If the government spends more and saves less, that’s a deficit-neutral plan? This entirely backward “reasoning” explains a hell of a bloody lot, doesn’t it, about why the deficit and the national debt got to where it is?

Thirdly, even if the master plan is to shrink government — in fact, especially if the master plan is to shrink government — the budget effect of a tax cut has to be offset. Kyl doesn’t even seem to realize that the deficit-shrinking tool kit includes spending cuts. Or that, if you want to shrink the government, it’s not enough to cut taxes, you have to bloody well cut spending too. Then, and only then, does the government shrink. And — this will probably come as a very rude shock to the guy, so as an act of Christian charity, we should make sure that Jon Kyl is sitting down when this is broken to him — the spending cut offsets the tax cut, to make it deficit-neutral.

In any reasonable adult universe, if you’re passionate about shrinking government, and you’re asked “How are you going to pay the $678 billion to keep Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?”, you answer: “By cutting spending, of course!”

In the universe that Congressional Republican leaders live in — that’s the one in which, the day you ascend to Republican leadership, they hand you a card which reads: “DRIVE THE CAR INTO THE DITCH! DRIVE THE CAR STRAIGHT INTO THE DITCH! DO NOT PASS GO! DO NOT COLLECT $200!” — you answer: “Why, by doing nothing at all, of course. Because, by golly, we mean to shrink government, we do.”