Ready for a government shitdown?

Anybody who thinks Tuesday's election doesn't matter, just consider what Mitch McConnell and his Tea Party tools have in store for Obama, the Democrats and the nation. Paul Krugman:

(The) era of partial cooperation in the 1990s came only after Republicans had tried all-out confrontation, actually shutting down the federal government in an effort to force President Bill Clinton to give in to their demands for big cuts in Medicare.
Now, the government shutdown ended up hurting Republicans politically, and some observers seem to assume that memories of that experience will deter the G.O.P. from being too confrontational this time around. But the lesson current Republicans seem to have drawn from 1995 isn’t that they were too confrontational, it’s that they weren’t confrontational enough.

Another recent interview by National Journal, this one with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has received a lot of attention thanks to a headline-grabbing quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

If you read the full interview, what Mr. McConnell was saying was that, in 1995, Republicans erred by focusing too much on their policy agenda and not enough on destroying the president: “We suffered from some degree of hubris and acted as if the president was irrelevant and we would roll over him. By the summer of 1995, he was already on the way to being re-elected, and we were hanging on for our lives.” So this time around, he implied, they’ll stay focused on bringing down Mr. Obama.

 Please, Democrats, don't be complacent.  We have plenty to complain about, and god knows we'll get the chance.  (Yes, Michelle Malkin, that's a small "g," as in "god help me you're an idiot.") But everything will come to a standstill if Republicans take over the House, the Senate, or both. The '90s will look like halcyon days of lollipops and sunshine compared to what looms for Obama and the Dems.  As Krugman reads it, and I agree, Mitch McConnell thinks the mistake Republicans made in the 90s was trying to push through actual programs.  How high-minded of them. It's clear now that that was just a frivolous indulgence -- they've done absolutely nothing over the past two years and they're being rewarded handsomely for it, that is, if we're stupid enough to allow it. No policy means more to them right now than toppling the O man, which is a bad omen for all of us. Now, if I had an asterisk thingy, I would have qualified that no-policy thing with tax cuts for the mega-rich. That's not frivolous, that's air, water and sunlight to them.

And speaking of sunlight -- or whatever technological marvel lends John Boehner his apricot hue -- do you want that giant orange boner man running the House? Pleaaaaaaase.

No, please. Vote. And if you live in the 19th District in New York, vote for John Hall.