Republicans Blame Obama For Tom Cotton Letter

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18. Something I've noticed about Republicans...

They're a lot more prone to overreaching their political hand, and not realizing they've done so until it's too late to back down gracefully.

All politicians are susceptible. They think their constituents want something and act accordingly. Only their constituents don't want it. The mismatch between perception and reality doesn't hit the politicians until the damage is done.

But Republicans have mastered the craft. This is especially true when they think part of their constituency will be excited about something and the rest apathetic about it. Their fight to keep Elian Gonzalez in the US in the 1990's was based on the belief that Cuban immigrants in Florida would care (and they did), but that the rest of Florida (and the rest of the US) wouldn't. Only they did - they saw efforts to circumvent a plainly-articulated legal obligation to return a young boy to his family in Cuba.

The Terry Schiaivo case was another. Republicans thought pro-life activists would be energized, and everyone else would either not pay attention or be open to the idea that politicians should override very sensitive private decisions best left to families and, if need be, the courts. By the time they realized the majority of Americans took great exception to what Republicans were doing, all possible dignified exits were closed. They couldn't back away without losing face.

I think the same thing is happening here. The only difference is the presence of teabaggers who seem even slower on the uptake. The core of their base is strongly against negotiations with Iran. Most Americans, including me, are generally pro-Israel, which they interpret (not always correctly) as the same thing. That many Americans were uneasy with Netanyahu speaking before Congress without dealing with the president seems to have gone over their heads. So they wrote a letter that any 8th grader would be embarrassed to read in front of a civics class.

I'm actively eager to see how they deal with the fallout.