Post Policy GOP?

This Tweet is so true....

Here's the NBC News story declaring this absurdest strategy:

Amid record-low productivity on Capitol Hill this year, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Sunday that Congress should be judged on how many laws it repeals, rather than how many new laws lawmakers enact. "We should not be judged on how many new laws we create," the nation's top elected Republican said on CBS. "We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal."

Congress has only passed 15 bills that have become law this year, putting it on pace to be even less productive than the preceding Congress, from 2011-2013, when 23 laws were enacted. Congress continues to suffer from record-low approval ratings and partisan gridlock that stalls most legislation (though there were some signs of a thaw this week).

The White House expressed its incredulity at the claim. "Did Speaker Boehner really say that the Congress should be judged on the number of laws they repeal not the number they pass?" asked senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Twitter.

Democrats in particular have been critical of House Republicans' 30-some attempts to repeal all or parts of President Barack Obama's health care reform law. Their most recent attempt came this week, when Republicans passed a law codifying the one-year delay in the law's employer mandate, even in the face of a veto threat from the White House. 

Check out this great summary of our "PostPolicyGOP" from Jonathan Chait:

One of the novel developments in conservative thought during the Obama years is a burgeoning hatred not merely for government but for lawmaking … a hatred for lawmaking has emerged in the Obama years, first as a Republican tactic, and then as an apparently genuine belief system.
A rare joint op-ed by Rich Lowry and William Kristol, editors of the National Review and the Weekly Standard … urge House Republicans to kill immigration reform, because passing it would involve legislating, and legislating is bad.

The revolt against legislating has its roots in the Republican campaign to oppose President Obama’s major legislation in his first two years. Attacking the stimulus or health-care reform for their legislative trade-offs was a smart rhetorical tactic for the party. It made sense as a tactic because Republicans really wanted to kill the stimulus, health-care reform, and financial reform entirely. “No bill” was the best potential scenario for them.

Tea-party logic simply regards the existence of compromise as disqualifying. The moral purity of opposition has become untethered from any political or policy objective, and appears to have sprouted into an actual freestanding principle. It’s not such a strongly held principle that it would survive if and when Republicans regain control of government. Lowry, Kristol, and the entire tea party will surely forget their hatred of side deals when they are needed to pass the next tax cuts.

But the hatred for legislating has gained a strong enough hold over the conservative mind as to render them unable to consider the merits of any bill at all.