There's something quite telling about Charles Krauthammer's concluding line to a column otherwise cheerfully devoted to Democrats' gross incompetence, seething corruption, weak-sister failure to create a global utopia and, in general, their unspeakably wayward governance of the American arcadia handed to them in 2009:
The stage is set for a major Republican victory [next Tuesday]. If they cannot pull it off under conditions so politically favorable, perhaps they might consider looking for another line of work.
Krauthammer is, for once, profoundly correct, indeed far more correct than he meant to be. Republicans' proper "line of work" is politicking and only politicking--never governing. For six years they've countered good and even rudimentary governance with political stunts, shenanigans and showboats; they've grandstanded and howled and disrupted; they've sniped, obstructed and reduced the world's oldest democracy to the world's leading laughingstock.
It's what they do, and they can do no other. Presently they howl that repealing and replacing Obamacare is their top legislative priority next year, should they control both houses of Congress. Repeal (merely more showboating, for repeal, as Republicans know, will suffer the inevitable veto), they no doubt will. Repeal is negation, it's nihilism, and it's raw, red meat for the base. Perfect. But replace? That would require a governing touch; thoughtful study groups and sober committee hearings and serious markups and no little negotiation and compromise. And that, congressional Republicans do not do.
What's more, any out-of-character attempt by some few Republicans to actually govern will be instantly nullified by fractured caucuses of mutual hostilities, adolescent resentment and ideological conflict. House tea partiers will be out for Boehner and McCarthy's semi-moderate hides, while Cruz, Lee & Co. will make life most unpleasant for purple-state senators up for 2016 reelection. Congress may now be a gaping black hole, but it's slated for reconstruction as a KinderCare center, with the toddlers in charge.
Find "another line of work" other than dark and chaotic politics? Whether in the majority or not, what else, Charles, can congressional Republicans do?