Do Our Elected Officials Give You Electile Dysfunction?

The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is a Congressman whose district is here in southwest Ohio.  He is being challenged in the primary by a tea party candidate, J. D. Winteregg.  I heard a parody campaign advertisement done by the Winteregg campaign that says "sometimes when a politician has been in D.C. too long, it goes to his head, and he just can't seem to get the job done."  The ad also says "if you have a Boehner lasting longer than 23 years, seek immediate medical attention."  If you're wondering how to tell if someone is suffering from electile dysfunction, here are some signs noted in this little parody:

• Can't get the job done
• Constituents' voices "can't be heard on the federal level"
• U.S. border can't be secured
• Second Amendment rights in jeopardy
• Obamacare gets funded
• Planned Parenthood gets funded using our tax dollars
• Common sense can't be used anymore to solve problems
• "Inability to punch oneself out of a wet paper bag"
• "Inability to . . . maintain a spine in the face of liberal opposition"
• Playing a lot of golf

The finale of this advertisement is the suggestion that J.D. Winteregg is the cure for electile dysfunction in Washington.  I guess that's true if you live in Ohio's 8th Congressional district.

This little advertisement is pretty cute.  If you want to view it on YouTube, here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A8kq85Umco 

It probably isn't fair to blame everything bad happening in America on John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or the other Republicans.  In fact, when a bill gets written and passed by the Democrats, how can it be blamed on the Republicans?  As an example, Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote.  At that point, I blamed the Democrats fully for bringing us Obamacare.  Either the Democrats or the American people are at fault.  After all, too many of my fellow Americans either voted for the Democrats in Congress and the White House or they stayed home and let them win.

On the other hand, the Republicans have had multiple opportunities to bring us a balanced budget and stop Obamacare.  The House has control of the budget process.  All budget and taxation bills MUST ORIGINATE IN THE HOUSE.  As I have written before, the Supreme Court allowed the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act to stand based on the mandate being a tax rather than a punitive fine, so how did the PPACA originate in the Senate?  The President can blame the Republicans for shutting down the federal government.  He can call them ugly names like "obstructionist."  He and the Senate can ask the press to blame everything on the Republicans.  However, the President can never get the debt ceiling raised without the consent of the Republican controlled House of Representatives.

This is supposed to be the "give and take" built into our federal government system of checks and balances.  Without the politicians "giving and taking" we end up with one of two things:  a MessAPolitical stalemate where no one gets anything they want or an unchecked runaway train that gives one side victory on every single issue.  There are three equal branches of government that must work together to accomplish anything.  If Speaker Boehner and the House of Representatives had any spine, they would refuse to take all of the crap being dealt by Harry Reid and Barack Obama.  John Boehner is probably a good guy.  That being said, he's the Speaker of the House.  He needs to learn how to negotiate so that we make progress on our conservative agenda.  If John Boehner doesn't know how to negotiate, and there is no evidence showing that he does, then he should be replaced as Speaker of the House with someone a lot tougher.  I don't know that John Boehner should be replaced in Congress, but he should NOT be Speaker of the House anymore.