A bad actor can mean an unruly, turbulent, or contentious individual in one sense, or it can mean a person who badly interprets a dramatic character in a production they perform in regardless it is film, television, theatre, radio, or in front of cameras during a weekly news conference. The incredibly bad performance on Wednesday was the second in three months for Speaker of the House John Boehner who put on an equally bad acting job of feigning righteous indignation for the press last December. Boehner’s last bad performance was his portrayal of an “outraged” House Speaker complaining that teabaggers and conservative belief tanks were out of line for objecting to the bi-partisan, bi-cameral budget agreement between Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray.
Boehner’s amateurish thespian attempt on Wednesday was also typical Republican hypocrisy and double standard targeting President Obama for extending the deadline to sign up for the Affordable Care Act by a about two weeks. Boehner must have spent all of Tuesday night perfecting his phony outrage to convince the press that during his tenure in the House he had never witnessed a president take executive action to extend a deadline for Americans to sign up for health insurance. Boehner said, “Last night brought us yet another delay of Obamacare, another deadline made meaningless. What the hell is this, a joke?” No Speaker Boehner, it was not a joke, it is precisely the same thing you witnessed George W. Bush do in May 2006 when he took executive action to waive “penalty fees for very low-income seniors and people with disabilities to sign up late” for the new Medicare Part D prescription plan and allowed the “same impoverished beneficiaries to sign up for Medicare drug coverage until December 31.” President Obama’s action was not exactly like Bush’s because Bush extended the enrollment for Medicare Part D by a full seven months and not two weeks that President Obama extended sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act for people who were “already in line.”
It is the second time Republicans and their conservative punditry feigned seething outrage over the Affordable Care Act’s online sign-ups they did not demonstrate when Bush’s Medicare prescription plan rollout did not work as well as advertised. Last November when the ACA rollout was plagued with glitches and long wait times, Republicans went berserk and convened a hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee to investigate the crimes in the Affordable Care Act’s implementation. When the Medicare prescription plan’s rollout experienced difficulties, Republicans lined up to beseech Americans to be patient and not pre-judge the prescription plan based on a few technical problems. A bevy of Republicans made excuses for the technical issues such as “This is a huge undertaking and there are going to be glitches. Any time something is new, there is going to be some glitches; it is going to take a little adjustment.”
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There is a recurring theme in Republican outrage over President Obama’s executive actions that centers on an African American President doing the same thing a white president (George W. Bush) did less than six years ago with no cries of presidential overreach, dictatorial tyranny, or overstepping his constitutional authority. For example, in late December the President signed an executive order titled “Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay” that mirrored Bush’s order five years earlier titled “Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay.” Last May President Obama signed an executive order titled “Providing an Order of Succession within the Department of Agriculture” that George W. Bush called “Amending the Order of Succession Within the Department of Agriculture” and signed in January 2009 just days before leaving office. President Obama signed an order titled “Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees” on September 20, 2013, and Bush signed his “Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees” on September 28, 2007. The list goes on and on and the overriding theme is that regardless the executive orders are nearly identical, Republicans react completely the opposite when a Black President takes executive action as when a white president who did the exact same thing while most Republicans feigning outrage were in Congress.
Republicans have assailed President Obama throughout his tenure for doing the same thing Bush did without criticism and in fact with great support. For example, over the past year Republicans and their punditry have attacked the education model called “common core” as a plot to control young Americans’ minds, but they heaped praise on Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” that was a deliberate attempt to close public schools, destroy teacher unions, and usher in an era of for-profit Charter schools using a voucher privatization scam. When President Obama asked Congress to pass a stimulus package to save the economy after Bush Republicans and the financial sector crashed the economy in 2008, the GOP was beside themselves with outrage even though they made impassioned pleas for Bush’s stimulus well before they crashed the economy as necessary to keep the economy running smoothly despite they squandered a budget surplus on tax cuts for the rich. Republicans nearly caused a credit default over raising the nation’s debt limit in 2011 because the President is Black, and yet they raised it without condition several times for white guy Bush. In every case of this President doing the exact same thing Bush did is the Republican’s phony outrage and reaction driven solely by President Obama’s race.
There is no doubt that, as Jason Easley pointed out here yesterday, Boehner was not amused that the President’s executive action giving prospective enrollees a little extra time to sign up for coverage in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges “outsmarted Boehner again, and killed his next line of Obamacare attacks before they could get started.” However, when Boehner asked “what the hell is this” he knew exactly what it was and that white president George W. Bush did precisely the same thing with his Medicare prescription plan with full Republican support and praise. What this President did was not, as Boehner asserted, “a long-term pattern of this administration manipulating the laws for its own convenience,” presidential overreach, dictatorial tyranny, or abusing the powers granted him by the Constitution. It was the same thing Republicans have criticized and complained about for five straight years without respite and the same today as it was in January 2009 when Republicans first complained that Barack Obama is President while being Black. They cannot possibly claim otherwise with a straight face or phony outrage because in every sense of the words Republicans are consummate bad actors and rank racists.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
