Expect More Political Games Ahead

It seems fairly predictable what congressional Republicans--ever amateurish, and both unwilling and utterly incapable of governing--will try to do now that President Barack Obama has defined the outlines of a plan to confront the terrorist organization known as ISIS (or ISIL).

First, Republicans will complain that the president’s objectives and tactics aren’t aggressive enough, and that sufficient details of his approach to curbing the Middle East terrorist threat have not been provided. Next, they’ll complain that the cost of the plan, as the president has conceived it, is excessive. At the same time, the GOP will refuse to articulate an alternative approach to shutting down ISIS--because they don’t have one. When the president and his fellow Democrats eventually try to get Congress on the record with a vote on a long-term strategy opposing the so-called Islamic State, Republicans will whine and complain that they have not seen enough to make them believe the plan will work, and so they can’t possibly support it. Again, they won’t offer any alternative, hoping instead to place the entire burden of this military/diplomatic campaign on Democrats ... who Republicans will look forward to later blaming for whatever might go wrong with the strategy (and things will inevitably go wrong). At that point, Democrats--realizing that they are in a no-win position--will leave the heavy lifting to President Obama, who Republicans (and their right-wingers water carriers in the media) will begin attacking for “not having worked hard enough” to win congressional backing for his ISIS strategy.

And you wonder why voters think Congress is incapable of getting anything done anymore...