The Political Cowardice of the GOP

No, I am not talking about whether or not they make a deal to open the government or avoid a default. Only an idiot keeps fighting a losing war.*

What I am talking about is running away from responsibility. That is the tactic of a six-year old child.

The Tea-Party Wing of the GOP has been bragging about what they were going to do since the 113th Congress was sworn in. They kept saying that they would follow up with their success at forcing the sequester by using the start of the new Federal fiscal year and then the debt ceiling to force the Democrats to cave. They stated, ad nauseum, that they would force Obama to defund the Affordable Care Act. Boehner bought into it. The Republicans agreed to a plan to wreck the government last January if they didn't get their way.

Here's the thing: Nobody really likes hostage-takers. When somebody takes a hostage, what follows from that is on them. Oh, the other side might make mistakes, they might even make mistakes that get the hostages killed. No matter how the other side screws up, the blame rests with the hostage-takers.

Republicans have figured this out, belatedly. Which is why their propaganda organs are spreading their usual lies that none of this would have happened if the Democrats had been reasonable and acceded to the GOP's blackmail. The thing is, that's the blame-shifting tactic of either a six year old child** or a criminal***.

Blaming the other guy for your screwup is certainly not what a mature adult would do. Grownups own their mistakes. But the "party of personal responsibility" only seems to bleat about personal responsibility when they can blame someone else.
____________________________________
* Gen. Robert E. Lee and Kaiser Wilhelm II were both far smarter than The Canadian Usurper.
** "It's not my fault that the window got in the way of my baseball! It's not faaairrrr!!"
*** "Yer Honor, if she had just let me rape her, I wouldn't have had to beat her up."