Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
The teabaggers who pushed John Boehner and the GOP caucus toward Armageddon are not blaming their defeat on his weak leadership or their own miscalculations. According to several stories at Talking Points Memo, they’re arguing they weren’t able to hang tough long enough because the the mainstream news media didn’t tell America the truth about Obamacare and what the Republicans were doing. In other words, these holy warriors believe they were stabbed in the back by journalists.
I’ve been expecting this. Before these jaspers admit they were wrong, they’re going to claim they were wronged. That’s human nature. As John Kenneth Galbraith remarked, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
Here, the proof is an ancient one, long practiced by the soundly trounced and stubbornly unrepentant: “We were not defeated on the battlefield — we were betrayed by traitors behind our lines.” After World War I, German militarists claimed Germany was stabbed in the back by the Jews, a myth that helped propel Hitler to power.
As long as the Gotterdammerung caucus in the House believes it lost because it was betrayed and wronged, not because it was mistaken and incompetent, it will keep seeking opportunities to destroy Obamacare and social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They’ll regroup and mount another insurrection.