Excellent round up on the various ways the Party of No can still throw some roadblocks. This isn’t entirely news; several states immediately claimed that implementing it would be unconstitutional. While we’ve been seeing a resurgance of tentherism that is related very obviously to neo-confederate and racist agendas, there has also always been this other strand fueling tentherism: the idea that HCR could be derailed also, and various bits of Obama legislation blocked.

This is different but the same themes: Block at all cost.

For all the GOP chest puffing about reversing the new health care law, a full repeal, to put it generously, is a long-term project. Even if they retake the House in November, they almost certainly won’t retake the Senate. Even if they retake both the House and the Senate, they’d still have to contend with the filibuster. And even if the filibuster weren’t an issue, they’d still have to contend with a Presidential veto. All of that adds up to long odds, and they know it.

But if they do retake the House, even by a slim margin, they could still make a great deal of mischief, effectively sentencing Obama’s history-making accomplishment to death by 1000 cuts.

“If Republicans are rewarded with control of the House of Representatives, we will use every means at our disposal to take that case to the American people, and repeal Obamacare lock stock and barrel,” said House GOP Conference Chair Mike Pence. “We’ll also use whatever means are available to delay implementation of Obamacare.”
[…]
This can work one of few ways. House Republicans, in negotiations with the Senate, could demand appropriation levels beneath what’s necessary to effectively implement the law. If the two chambers reach an agreement — even an agreement that leaves the health care law cash strapped — Obama would be hard pressed to issue a veto. “It’s hard for the president to veto a bill because it doesn’t provide enough money.”

Consequently it should be no surprise that one of the queen of the tenthers, Michelle Bachmann herself, had this to say yesterday:

Bachmann: ‘All We Should Do Is Issue Subpoenas’ If GOP Wins House (AUDIO)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has a plan for what the Republicans should do if they win control of the House of Representatives: Spend all their time investigating the Obama administration.

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann told the Three Fingers of Politics website. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another, and expose all the nonsense that has gone on.

This is the nonsense: the pretense that anything the GOP currently does is about governing or acting to help the American people. It’s all about derailing Obama— by any means necessary.

Expect impeachment proceedings and subpoenas if the GOP takes the House in the fall, or, in a prudent forecast, some very serious efforts to get those underway. I would also forecast that another gubbmint shutdown a la Newt will be floated.
Bachmann is a nutbar, but don’t kid yourself that she’s isolated. She just loudly broadcasts some of the white noise and static filling the GOP’s collective head now.

Everything old is new again!