Recently welcomed to political reality were GOP House members Tim Murphy, Gus Bilirakis, Sean Duffy, Steve Southerland, Mike Fitzpatrick, Richard Nugent, Vern Buchanan, Jim Renacci and Connie Mack, who, writes Politico, are "new lawmakers in formerly Democratic seats or House veterans who represent districts with large elderly populations dependent on Medicare."
They're also traumatized. Paralyzed. Absolutely scared stiff and hilariously noncommittal about Paul Ryan's budget proposal, which I've no doubt the members now wish he had treated as he would personal sales receipts from some of Dick Morris' hookers.
When queried by Politico, more than a dozen offices either pointed to week-old nonstatements expressing vague support for the plan or refused to indicate whether the member planned to support it on the floor.
The point of course isn't that Ryan's plan is both imbecilic and doomed; it's that dozens of House members and their partisan majority are doomed should they be so delightfully imbecilic as to vote for the wretched thing.
Personally, I wish them the courage of their dunderheaded ideology. They should defy those big-government liberals and laugh at those Beltway commentators and sniff at those pansies of moderation; they should reveal, at long last, that the American people they purport to represent are indeed with them all the way in making the hard but calamitously wrong choices.
With luck, and given their gaping deficiencies in American history, they won't first recall the aftermath of Dustin Hoffman's advice in "Little Big Man": "You go down there, General [Custer]."