Kitchen Table Republicans are a Dysfunctional Family

Every family who really sits around a kitchen table knows how tough it is to solve problems, but they just do it.

Although it's become an overused political metaphor, it's worth revisiting the kitchen table concept, in the context of a dysfunctional family.  It's time to explain how the Republicans have abandoned the kitchen table. Rather, they're metaphorically sitting in broken chairs, cowering in dunce corners, because they can't resolve problems.  Sadly, the GOP (Grumpy Old Party) are simply acting out, like spoiled children. They're shirking their fiduciary duties, like political truants, when it comes to lifting the stupid federal budget sequestration, the restoration of vitally needed funding to important programs like Head Start or fixing the bridges their constituents drive on.  They'd rather sit in a dunce's corner, in a broken chair, than gather at the kitchen table to solve problems.  

Although, recently, Speaker of the House John Boehner finally met with the Congressional Hispanic caucus to discuss immigration reform, this tete-a-tete was long overdue.  Their meeting was, no doubt, motivated after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on the Sunday TV talk shows to describe the Republican party as heading into a demographic death spiral if immigration reform isn't resolved by Congress. Wow! Now, there's a morbid metaphor, if I ever heard one. Let me get this right. So, it took the image of political death to bring about bipartisan discourse on immigration reform.  This crises reaction certainly sounds dysfunctional to me.  Speaker John Boehner is the head of the Congressional "family", so to speak.  He needs to speak to his family, every once in awhile, and not just to his favored partisan few.

Let's fact it, the Republicans are as dysfunctional a party as any broken chair I've ever seen.

Republicans like to bring up "kitchen table politics" when defining concepts they find fundamentally distasteful, like "deficits"  or "balancing the budget".  Nevertheless, governments can't easily get out from under deficits because, in fact, they don't really have to balance budgets.  Kitchen table problem solving isn't realistic when applied to managing governments, because the kind of people who sit around kitchen tables, like families used to do, once up on a time, don't fund international wars.  Moreover, we can't raise taxes to pay for them, either.  

But Congress can, in fact, fix the stupid federal sequester.  They have the unlimited capacity to solve problems through compromise.  All Congress needs to do, to roll back the federal sequester, or to pass immigration reform (including a path to citizenship for immigrants) and to fund infrastructure programs, thereby creating jobs....yes, all Republicans have to do, to resolve all of the above, and more...is to.....taaaadaaaa!.....Just Do It! 

That's all they have to do, is just do it.  It's incredulously simple, but Republicans only respond, they don't lead.

Hopefully, Congressional dysfunction isn't lost on American voters. We must come out to vote, in force, in the 2014 mid term elections, so we can, once and for all, roll back the Republican extremist agenda.  They obviously didn't hear it after the 2012 election of President Obama, because they've become so wrapped up in dysfunctional relationships with right wing extremism that they simply can't fix what's wrong with them.  Let's not keep a broken political party in Congress.  It's time to vote the obstructionists like Speaker John Boehner out of office and replace him and with efficient political leaders who know how to build functional political families.