Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

17 October 2013

In Boehner’s “Good Fight,” echos of the Confederacy’s “Lost Cause”

After the Civil War, defeated Confederates such as Jubal Early worked to turn public attention away from their failed fight to perpetuate slavery. Early claimed the hopelessly outnumbered South had, in a Lost Cause, defended its enviable and genteel way of life. The South had lost the fight, he argued, but not its honor. It was, as the University of Virginia’s Dr. Gary Gallagher explains, an emotionally appealing but intellectually dishonest rationalization of a dirty, bloody war that many in the South embrace even today:

Gallagher and Alan Nolan further develop the theme in their entertaining and informative book, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History.

The Lost Cause was the first thing that came to mind after Boehner told an Ohio radio station that “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win.”

He’s right about not winning, but wrong and dishonest about fighting a good fight to:

…to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country’s debt and providing fairness for the American people under ObamaCare. [Statement issued by Boehner.]

After losing the last two Presidential elections, failing to win a majority in the U.S. Senate, and securing a majority in the U.S. House while receiving fewer votes than the Democrats, Boehner and the Teabagger Caucus shut down the federal government to try to win by extortion what they had lost at the polls. They compounded their hostage taking by threatening to let the United States default on its obligations, a tactic so reckless and irresponsible that it disqualifies the Republican Party from governing.

That wasn’t a good fight. It was an insurrection — and an insurrection that’s likely to reappear again and again until the voters finally have the wisdom and will to throw the tea soaked bums out for good.