Once again, Congressional Republicans are demonstrating how out of touch with reality they really are, and John Boehner continues to prove himself as one of the worst Speakers of the House in recent memory.

As the federal government shutdown continues into its second week, there has been a lot of mud slinging between both Democrats and Republicans assigning blame for the current situation on the opposition.

It’s time to clear things up.

The shutdown isn’t a “Democratic shutdown” or “Harry Reid’s shutdown,” as some Republicans in Congress have dubbed it.

No, this is all a piece of political theater carefully orchestrated by Republicans. They took a beating in the elections last November, and they wouldn’t miss the opportunity to cast President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats in the worst possible light.

What should have been a completely non-controversial affair became exactly that when House Republicans attached a provision that would defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — otherwise known as Obamacare — to the continuing resolution needed to keep the government funded.

We’ve all seen far-right Republicans’ pathological hatred of Obamacare — which is ironically similar to a Republican alternative offered in opposition to President Bill Clinton’s health reform plan in the 1990s — with the U.S. House of Representatives’ dozens of meaningless votes to repeal it.

But the law eventually passed in 2010 and was upheld by the Supreme Court this past summer.

In essence, the Tea Party ideologues that have come to control and speak for all House Republicans in the past few years have taken a non-issue and made it a big issue.

They want to repeal a law legitimately passed by both houses of Congress, legitimately signed into law by the President of the United States and legitimately deemed constitutional by the nation’s highest court.

Are Republicans in Congress this far disjointed from reality, or is their goal to make themselves look like children? If the latter is true, they’ve been doing an excellent job of it lately.

It’s laughable to suggest that Democrats are being unreasonable by not “compromising,” as the radical right has complained this past week.

If I were to knock on a stranger’s door and say, “You have two choices: Either I burn your entire house down or I burn only the second floor down,” would I have the right to complain about a lack of compromise when the homeowner slams the door in my face?

Of course not. But in this case, the Republican Party is the would-be arsonist and the Democratic Party is the homeowner who laughs and slams the door.

Obamacare represents the biggest legislative victory for the Democrats since the Great Society programs of the Lyndon Johnson era. And Republicans can’t stand to see their opposition win big victories while they continue to have trouble appealing to the majority of Americans and winning elections.

Perhaps the worst part of this whole ordeal is that Congress has until Oct. 17 to raise the debt ceiling — which, contrary to popular belief, allows us to spend money we already said we were going to spend. Failure to do so would result in a default that would have disastrous economic effects.

It’s time for Congressional Republicans to stop playing politics. The House must pass a clean, continuing resolution that preserves Obamacare and reopens the government.

Bigger issues lie ahead, and ending the distraction of a government shutdown is critical to focusing on the ensuing debt ceiling debate.

David Swenton is a senior political science and writing and rhetoric major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at daswento@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @DavidSwenton.

Published on October 9, 2013 at 1:36 am