WIKIPEDIA: In common English usage, a Kabuki dance is an activity or drama carried out in real life in a predictable or stylized fashion, reminiscent of the Kabuki style of Japanese stage play. It refers to an event that is designed to create the appearance of conflict or an uncertain outcome, when in fact the actors have worked together to determine the outcome beforehand.
SENATOR OBAMA (2006): The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America ’s debt limit.
As Eric “Thelma” Cantor and Paul “Louise” Ryan get ready to drive off the cliff with the American economy tied up and held hostage in the trunk, I’m getting pretty sick of listening to Republicans harkening back to Senator Obama’s craven bit of shameless posturing I’ve excerpted above.
In the old days of the last century and the early part of this one, members of both parties would cheaply exploit debt ceiling votes, taking a cheap vote and a making snarky statements like that of the former junior Senator from Illinois..
And then they’d let the other side take the heat and the bad vote.
But, there has always been one thing no one's ever done, and that's actually try to stop the debt ceiling from being raised.
Even when the Presidents have had their own party in the minority in Congress, the other party has always supplied enough votes to raise the deficit ceiling, and they’ve always done it cleanly, without extracting a price.
Admittedly, the Republicans have sometimes had a hard time doing this, back when Ronald Reagan made the case for clean debt ceiling increases, he was slapping down both the kabuki players and ideological fanatics in his own party. But that was back when Republicans who understood the responsibilities of governance constituted more than a rump faction.
In the word of Don Corleone: How did things ever get so far? I don't know. It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary.
The negotiations over the debt ceiling have now taken on a Middle Eastern quality.
Ehud Barak Obama has now offered No-Sir Boehnerfat everything he wanted handed to him on a silver platter with a sprig of parsley on the side, and now like Arafat, Boehner, fearing murder by his rejectionists, has chosen the certainty of avoiding death over the uncertainties of obtaining his goals.
And, like Arafat, I suspect that, in the end, he will get neither. But we will still have to endure the bloody and pointless Intafada.
Back, in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, still presiding over a Caucus of members required to raise enough money to win statewide races, and thereby susceptible to both the cries of Wall Street, and its cash, has proposed his own alternative:
“BRING BACK KABUKI”
This is the responsible position.
If I were McConnell, I’d let the clean vote come to the floor, and gleefully have all 47 members of my conference snarkily re-read Senator Obama’s 2006 speech and vote no while letting it pass.
But, in the House, faced with the prospect of having to supply at least 25 votes themselves, the GOP is in sore need of a Japanese translator.
For the GOP of No-Sir Boehnerfat, Thelma Cantor and Louise Ryan is incapable of understanding the difference between “kabuki” and “kamikaze.”