Commentary

MILT THOMAS

I thought I would take a few minutes off from all the hoopla surrounding our Vero Beach city council election to say a few words about what’s happening in Washington right now. First of all, up until these past few weeks, deficits have been the proverbial elephant in the room. Now there are two elephants in the room – the Federal deficit and right wing Republicans. As I’ve noted before, I am a lifelong Republican and consider myself fiscally conservative. But shutting down the government to get back at Obama for passing his signature accomplishment into law is like the joke about the guy who lost an argument, put a gun to his head and said, “Don’t laugh – you’re next!”

Did they really think threatening to shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded would get past the Democrats? Or the president? Or other reasonable Republicans?

Well, it didn’t work, so their fallback position was to delay implementation of Obamacare. Not interested? Then we’ll remove employer contributions to legislator and staff health insurance. Yes sir, that’ll show them who’s running this show.

Meanwhile, the federal government is shut down, throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work and closing national parks just as the Griswolds arrived at Wallyworld for their family vacation. And let’s throw in the fiscal cliff for some more laughs.

Congress in all its bickering as it teeters on the edge of disaster is like a game of truth or dare.  Actually, it’s more like a sitcom. Or a Greek tragedy – not the ancient one, but the modern one that seems to be our role model.

Of course, it really isn’t the entire Republican Party behind this self-immolation scheme. To paraphrase a line from Stephen Colbert’s show on Comedy Central, the donkey represents Democrats, the elephant represents Republicans, and the tea party represents the elephant’s bad case of hemorrhoids.

For all the criticism of our two party system, I think it speaks well of that system when we can make three or more philosophies out of two parties. We’ve had the Ralph Naders, the George Wallaces, the Ross Perots and the William Jennings Bryans – Bryan actually ran on three different party philosophies. By the way, he gave his last speech right here in Vero Beach two weeks before his death.

Actually, many politicians and aspiring politicians have died here, at least figuratively speaking. There are two running for City Council right now who must have political death wishes, Brian Heady and James Guffanti. In both cases I have found them to be articulate, intelligent and personable men, but for each of them, the switch in your brain that automatically closes your mouth when you’ve gone too far, seems to be missing. I expect they will both speak frequently at future city council meetings, but from the lectern, not the dais.

Two incumbents also seem to have that same brain switch problem, but unfortunately only one of them is running for re-election.