John Boehner will resign from Congress

The Early Morning final editions are on the stands
The Town Crier he's cryin' with nickels in his hands
Pigs in a blanket, 69 cents
Eggs, roll 'em over, and a package of Kents
Adam and Eve on a log
You can sink 'em, damn straight
Hash browns, hash browns
Ya' know I can't be late

 

Hopefully McConnell follows Boehner's lead.

 

And to keep Starman's theme going ...

 

Rhode Island actually has one - Jim Langevin. But he's not a hardliner on it or anything.

 

I don't know if his positions can be described as "moderate" but Bob Casey Jr. is pretty firmly pro-life and doesn't seem to draw much primary opposition.

The demise of pro-life Democrats is not particularly because of a great intra-party purge but because of the lack of electoral success of Democrats in socially conservative districts. For example, Colin Peterson, who is/was the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture committee is from Northwestern Minnesota and get's a zero score from the NARL. But Ken Oberstar, who was the long-time congressman from Northeastern Minnesota and pro-life got knocked off in 2010.

 

As an opponent of abortion, I'm in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood. It can raise its own funding.

But let's say the GOP is successful in this. Let's say they defund Planned Parenthood.

It will unleash a funding drive for Planned Parenthood that makes conservatives' heads spin.

The GOP can't win a social and values war. It represents interests too traditonally seen as the enemy of the greater good. Intrinsically, people know this. The more battles it wins, the greater the groundswell against them. Gerrymandering might carry the day for a few more decades, but, in the long run, it burns out.

 

Planned Parenthood is a popular organization, much more so than, say, Congress. But if it wasn't them, it'd be some other issue. The most right wing faction of the Republican caucus can't come to terms with the simplest of political realities. They ain't the got the votes to do what they want and won't until 2017 at the earliest.

 

Amazing, isn't it? Both sides are fixated on -- and willing to at least consider shutting the government down over -- something that at most represents 14/1000ths of a percent of the federal budget. Even more amazing, to me, is the idea that something that small, relatively speaking, is something you gotta control all three branches of government to change.

 

That's what happens when you mix church and state.

 

That's how the Founders wanted it, a system that made change very hard to get unless there was what they assumed would be consensus within the country for said change. As a matter of fact, they didn't foresee party struggles, but struggles between those different branches of government. Blame James Madison and Alexander Hamilton if you're dissatisfied with that state of affairs.