HOUSE BONEHEADS MAY HAVE HANDED OBAMA HIS SECOND TERM ON A SILVER PLATTER

The Republicans have been on a hell-bent roll of self-destruction. The presidential candidates have been ripping each other apart, thus providing lots of campaign fodder for the Democrats to use against the eventual winner who will be Obama’s opponent. But that’s nothing compared to what the tea party boneheads among House Republicans managed to do - they virtually handed Obama his second term on a silver platter.

The Senate passed a stop-gap measure to extend the payroll tax cuts for two months. The bipartisan measure preserved the $1,000 average tax break for 160 million working Americans, maintained benefit payments for the long-term unemployed and prevented reduced Medicare payments to doctors. Even though Congress will have to wrestle with this measure all over again when it returns from its holiday break, the payroll tax cut was important to middle class Americans.

Speaker John Boehner was all set to sign off on the Senate measure when the tea party Republicans hung Boehner out to dry and left him twisting in the wind by refusing to go along. This led prominent Republicans, the Wall Street Journal and, of course, President Obama to condemn the House tea party boneheads and to question the Speaker’s leadership.

In the end, the House boneheads caved in, but not before giving Obama a huge political victory, one that may well carry him into a second term. Obama capitalized on the fact that the Republicans were about to raise the taxes of hard working middle class Americans, and that resonated well throughout the country.

Obama had been blaming the GOP for the congressional gridlock since well before this latest Republican debacle. When you add up the congressional gridlock, the attacks on each other by the Republican presidential candidates and the payroll tax cut fiasco of the House boneheads, it spells victory for President Obama. And if either Ron Paul or Donald Trump decides to run as a third party candidate, that will be the coup de grace to the Republican Party’s presidential quest.